I'm Amy Akeman, founder of Ethan's Reach, based in Fayette and Coweta counties in Georgia. I spent several years as a firefighter/paramedic with Fayette County Fire, and I'm now in nursing school with an interest in forensic nursing.
For me, safety isn't a feeling of being careful — it's being ready before you need to be. It means the right tool is already in your hand at the moment that matters, because there's no time to go looking for it once the emergency starts.
I want my community to know a safety tool only works if it's on you, not on your car. Seatbelt cutters and window breakers mounted to a visor or console only, only help if you happen to be driving that exact vehicle. The moment you borrow a car, rent one, or ride with someone else, that protection is gone. The tool needs to travel with the person — on a keychain — not only stay behind with the vehicle.
Having he right equipment is so important because so many of these accidents are survivable — if you can act in the first 30 to 90 seconds. Vehicle submersion claims around 400 lives a year in the U.S., and in most of those cases, the difference between escaping and not escaping isn't luck. It's whether the driver had a $10 tool within reach. Equipment like this turns a fatal accident into a story someone gets to tell.
I had seen stuff about resqme for awhile, I knew tools like this from the fire service — but I learned the hardest way possible how much it matters where the tool is. My son Ethan had a similar escape tool mounted on the visor in his regular car. The night he died, he was driving our spare vehicle because his was in the shop and it didn't have one. Since then, I have been trying to find a way to make sure the worst day of my life is preventable to others. When I came across Resqme, I was instantly interested in the fact that it had the keychain carry option. I carry one on my own keychain now, and it's the first thing I hand a new driver at every event we do.
Ethan's story is the one that changed everything for me. On January 2, 2024, my son Ethan — 21 years old, home for Christmas after finishing Army bootcamp — was driving home on a dark Georgia road when his car went into a lake. His personal car had an extrication tool on the visor. That night, he was in our spare vehicle, and it didn't. The crews that responded were from Fayette County Fire — the department I'd worked at just months before, on what would have been my shift. When they recovered the car, the evidence showed Ethan had been awake and attempting to get out of the car. He didn't have the one thing that could have given him those seconds. That's the story behind every keychain we hand out.
I want people to understand that preparedness doesn't have to be complicated or expensive — it can cost $10 and clip to a keychain. I'd love for every new driver to leave their driver's ed course already equipped, not because they were scared into it, but because it became as normal as buckling a seat belt. If Ethan's story makes one family put a tool on their kid's keys before they ever need it, that's the whole point of Ethan's Reach.
