As her father watched from a trailing motorcycle, Nancy Winter's cycle hit a patch of sand and then the guardrail along a Wisconsin highway Sunday.

"I took her off the railing as gently as I could and felt her heart," David Winter, of Lino Lakes, said Wednesday.

A paramedic passing on his motorcycle stopped to assist. "He pumped on her chest, and I blew down her throat," David Winter said. Two nurses came upon the scene and also helped.

Despite their efforts, Winter, 29, an Air Force Reservist, who often rode with her father and other family members, died of head injuries, her loosely fastened helmet torn off by the force of the crash on Hwy. 35 near Prescott, Wis.

David Winter said his daughter "hit the sand [on the road] and lost control, then hit the guard railing. She bounced about four times" on the rail's posts.

As a sergeant with the 153rd MDG (Medical Group) in the Wyoming Air National Guard, Nancy Winter had helped recover bodies from the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York City after the 9/11 attack.

A 1997 graduate of Glencoe-Silver Lake High School, she studied nursing at Century College in White Bear Lake before she joined the military and was being stationed in the Twin Cities with the 934th Airlift Wing.

Her work at the World Trade Center site, where she spent more than two months, earned her an achievement award for her "outstanding professional skill, knowledge and leadership," said Wyoming Air National Guard spokeswoman Deidre Forster.

She had transferred to the Wyoming unit last year to help an aunt with medical problems, her father said.

Last week, she returned with others in the 153rd MDG from a humanitarian mission in Guatemala, Forster said.

David Winter said that the weekend outing was her first motorcycle ride since last year. He said they would sometimes ride with relatives, but other times it was "just the two of us."

In addition to her father, Winter is survived by her mother, Donna Knop, and a sister, Laura. Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. today at Mueller Parkway Chapel, 835 Johnson Pkwy., St. Paul. Services will be held at the chapel at 11 a.m. Friday.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482