KITCHENER — "Get me out," she said, dying in the wreckage of her car.

Neil Hamilton heard her plea. He tried to help. But she was trapped beyond his reach, behind twisted doors and mangled frame.

Kitchener resident Samantha Stremmelaar perished there, after a driver going the other way crashed head-on into her car on a rural highway.

Hamilton was in the car behind her. The collision happened 18 months ago.

"I think about it every day," he said. "It's shaped my entire life for the past year."

The trauma he experienced ravaged his mental health. He lost his job. Relationships collapsed.

Now he's crafting a plan to help him heal, still thinking of the stranger he could not save.

Hamilton intends to hike across Canada, to raise awareness around mental health and solicit donations for the Canadian Mental Health Association.

He's calling it his 'Walk for Samantha.'

"Her death, being there to witness it, it changed me. It made me sick," said Hamilton, who lives near Peterborough, Ont. "But it also put me in a place where I can do this to help other people.

"I don't want her to have died for nothing on that highway."

Samantha's mother is touched.

"I can see her saying, 'Go ahead and do it,'" Vicki Stremmelaar said.

Vicki knows her daughter would not have wanted her senseless death to cause someone else to suffer.

"I hope this helps him," Vicki said. "And it's something that Sam would want to do. Because Sam volunteered for everything."

Samantha, 35, worked for Sun Life. She played soccer, took many photographs, and enjoyed being outdoors.

Three months before she died, she drove alone almost 9,000 kilometres in 14 days across the U.S. and back, sleeping in her car and showering at truck stops to save money.

She met strangers, visited national parks, ate the best hamburger, and rappelled down a mountain in Utah. She called it her 'great American old west road trip.'

Samantha believed that if you saw a mountain, you should climb it. Her family saw her as a female Indiana Jones.

Hamilton, now 28, knew none of this on Aug. 7, 2017, while travelling on Highway 7 in Lanark County in eastern Ontario.

It was just before 4:30 p.m. on a fine summer day. He was a passenger, chilling with his bare feet on the dashboard, when calamity struck Samantha's car ahead.

She was driving home alone to Kitchener, after visiting her parents in Quebec on a long weekend. She grew up there in a small town on the U.S. border.

Hamilton learned who she was after watching her die.

The trek he proposes would see him hike up to 7,000 kilometres from Newfoundland to B.C., camping outdoors and organizing athletic and charity events along the way. He's training for it and hopes to launch it April 1.

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Plans are taking shape for a film crew to document the effort. A Peterborough business, Popeye's Supplements, is lending support. He hopes more corporate sponsors may join.

"I think it's unbelievable that Neil has taken the initiative to raise money for mental health," said Jack Veitch, manager of community engagement with the Peterborough branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association. "I'm curious to see and excited to see how far along he can come."

The cause of the collision has been resolved by a traffic court.

Arthur Scheuneman, now 68, drove his Dodge minivan into Stremmelaar's Subaru. Hamilton leapt from his car to comfort him, asking his name and grasping his hand while the injured man waited for rescue.

"He was pretty broken," Hamilton recalls. "There was a river of blood." Pieces of windshield pierced Hamilton's feet.

An ambulance took Scheuneman to a Kingston, Ont. hospital. He survived. Police charged him with careless driving three months later. It is not a criminal offence.

Ten court dates concluded Oct. 30, 2018. Scheuneman, who lives in the countryside near Perth, Ont., pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of leaving his lane unsafely.

A justice of the peace fined him $1,000 and gave him a year to pay.

"It's really hard to swallow," Vicki Stremmelaar said. "There's a big, big hole in our hearts."

The fundraising trek Hamilton plans in her daughter's name seems like something bright, to pierce the grief and frustration.

"I can see Sam liking this fellow," Vicki said. "Maybe something good will come out of something horrible."

Samantha liked to camp. Her mother has kept her outdoor gear. It will find a new home with Neil.

She won't climb another mountain with it. Maybe he will.

jouthit@therecord.com

Twitter: @OuthitRecord