Crash victim spent last days helping kids in need

SANTA FE (KRQE) - There's a story behind every deadly crash on New Mexico’s highways.
    
A crash during the snow storm Sunday night on I-25 was particularly heart-breaking.
    
The victim was a teacher almost home after delivering Christmas gifts to kids in need.
    
Dorothy Mullins, known as Ddotty by those who loved her, taught 3rd grade at Kearny Elementary in Santa Fe for the last 16 years.
    
She had just finished volunteering with her Santa Fe's City of Faith Christian Church when she was killed.
  
The crash happened Sunday evening on an icy I-25.
    
Police say Mullins was headed northbound when she hit the barrier wall.
    
Her car spun out and was hit by a truck.
    
Mullins died instantly.

"Dotty had a gift that was definitely a gift with children she just had a way of making them feel so loved,” Mullins’ friend, Patricia Stockton, said.
    
Mullins spent her last days helping with a national project known as Operation Christmas Child, handing out toothbrushes, clothing and small toys to kids in the border town of Juarez.

"Her love was children her church her family and her friends and she totally devoted her life to that,” Stockton said.

Mullins left for Juarez Thursday and was almost home when the storm hit Sunday.
   
Her friends and family say the trip captures what she was about.

"With Dotty it's the spirit of giving…Dotty was not focused on earthly things but on blessing on other people and that was her life, “Stockton said.

And that love spilled into her classrooms for 30 years. She taught in Albuquerque, Carlsbad, Deming, Los Alamos and Santa Fe.

"She was always spend her own money in the classroom and she would buy students if they needed things a lot of the time they didn't have a lot of money and she would by students clothes and shoes, “ her niece, Melanie Romero, said.

Romero says Mullins spirit will live on.

"Our family has another angel watching over us now because I know she's watching out for us,” Romero said.
 
The family has had so many calls from people who want to attend the funeral that they are looking for a bigger church for the services.
    
Right now they're not sure where and when that will happen.
         
Kearny Elementary School also plans to hold a memorial service for Mullins next week.
     
Grief counselors are at the school to help students.