OREGON CITY, Ore. - The fact that Mindy Mayer was even able to sit down with KATU News and talk about the immense pain of her horrifying ordeal is stunning and commendable.

It has been just three months since a floatplane crash at Traitor's Cove in Alaska left five of her family members dead - husband David Mayer, son Eric Smith, daughter-in-law Christine Smith, grandson Trevor Smith and granddaughter Allison Smith, who died weeks later at the hospital.  Daniel Herron of Irvine, California was killed in the crash as well.  Three people survived - Mindy Mayer, pilot Clifford Kamm and tour guide Sara Steffen.

On August 16, Mindy's family, all from the Portland area, boarded a floatplane north of Ketchikan to go on a bear sighting trip. It had been a beautiful day, but suddenly the wind picked up and the clouds blew fast. The pilot got on the radio and said he was heading home.

"We had gone on the water and then started going up in the air," Mindy said. "I was looking out my window and all of a sudden I heard the pilot say 'it's a downdraft, it's a downdraft! I can't get out of it!' I immediately switched from looking to my window to looking straight ahead. And that's when I saw the mountain and the trees coming at us. And that's the last I remember, until I woke up inside the plane."

Inside that plane, Mindy listened for signs of life. There was silence, except for the voice of her 37-year-old son, Eric.

"The last words I heard my son saying was the ache of him realizing what had happened to his family," Mindy said. "And him saying 'my family, my family - mom, look what I've done to my family.'"

Eric had been holding his 3-year-old daughter Allison on his lap. She was also alive.

"And I said, 'just hand me Allison. I see light,'" Mindy said. "I saw a hole or something to the right side of me. And I said 'just hand me Allison. I see light. I can get out.' And then I grabbed Allison and somehow I jumped out of that plane."

Then, instead of silence, there was the noise that still haunts Mindy - explosions. The plane was in flames and her family was still inside.

"And I just had to crawl on my hands and knees, like a dog, and my goal was to pull and push her until I could not feel the heat of the plane anymore," Mindy said.

Mayer's son might have been able to make it out, but he didn't.

"He died trying to be a hero," said Mindy. "He cared so much about his family. There's no way he would have ever gotten out of that plane without having tried to get them out."

Mindy and her 3-year-old granddaughter, Allison, waited and waited for help to arrive.

"'Minnie,' she said, 'go back, I lost my shoe.' I said 'Allison, we'll buy you all the shoes you want, but we're not going back to get that one," said Mindy. "She kept talking - 'why did that mean pilot do that to us? Where's mommy? Where's daddy? Where's Trevor?' She talked so clearly the whole time."

It appeared the two of them would have an indelible bond created by a freakish twist of fate, but just seven weeks later, Allison died in the hospital. She had been burned over 60 percent of her body.

"You know, the whole time my son and his wife and her twin brother were trying to pull her up to heaven and we were trying to pull her back down," said Mindy. "They were a very close family."

Mindy suffered broken pelvic bones and several fractured ribs, but she is alive, somehow. We asked her if she had tried to sort out over the last couple of months why she had survived and not her family.

"I've asked priests. I've asked rabbis. I've asked ministers. I've asked reverends," she said. "I've asked everybody I know, why did I live? Everybody tells me it was for a purpose. I can't understand that purpose myself."

As she tries to come to terms with what happened to her family, Mindy is depending on an old family pledge to help in the fight.

"If I could give meaning for living, that's what I hope comes out of this," she said. "And people need to remember to appreciate today for today. Because you never know what tomorrow is going to bring."

Mindy wants to honor her family by dedicating two rooms in their names at the Ronald McDonald house, which is a place where families from out of town can stay when their children are being treated at local hospitals. If you would like to help raise money for that effort, you can head to the Ronald McDonald Web site and make a donation.

(All crash photos courtesy of Alaska State Troopers)