SPMH registered nurse killed Saturday when car slams into tree off Hwy 150

December 05, 2001
Santa Paula News

The California Highway Patrol is still investigating the Highway 150 accident that killed a well-liked and respected member of the Santa Paula Memorial Hospital nursing team on Saturday.

By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesThe California Highway Patrol is still investigating the Highway 150 accident that killed a well-liked and respected member of the Santa Paula Memorial Hospital nursing team on Saturday.Donna Popular, 51, had just finished her night shift at the SPMH Emergency Room and was traveling to her Ojai home when the accident occurred at about 7:30 a.m., according to CHP Officer Doug Howell.For an unknown reason Popular’s van left the road and slammed into a tree on a tight westbound curve of Highway 150 between Santa Paula and Ojai.Popular suffered massive internal injuries and was transported to Ventura County Medical Center where she died that afternoon. She was not wearing her seat belt and investigators are looking into whether or not she had unlocked it to use her in-vehicle cell phone, momentarily taking her eyes off the road.Popular, an R.N., “Had been in the community network emergency system for quite a while,” said SPMH ER Supervisor-Assistant Director of Nursing Carol Askren, R.N.
At SPMH, Popular “always worked the night shift.” She was also employed at Ojai Valley Community Hospital where she worked in the OB unit and as a supervisor, but the “ER was her love.”Employed at SPMH for almost five years, Popular was “such an integral part of the hospital it seemed like she had been here much longer,” said Askren. “She worked a lot; if ever there was an extra shift to pick up Donna would pick it up. She had just a wonderful love of life, always had plans, always had things she was doing. . .Donna was just an active, active person.”Popular, a native of New York, was a graduate of the School of Nursing at Children’s Hospital in Boston.Services for Popular, who is survived by sons Jimmy Popular and Wade Popular, both of Ojai, and other close relatives, are being held today in New York. An Ojai memorial service is being planned for early December.There were seven people killed throughout Ventura County over the Thanksgiving weekend, one of the deadliest holiday periods in more than a decade. Throughout the state there were 39 traffic deaths, an increase of 35 percent over Thanksgiving weekend 2000 when 28 people were killed. Ventura County’s seven fatalities were almost a fifth of the state’s total of traffic deaths.



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