Carrie Fisher’s Family Seeks Out Her In-Flight Angels, Mark Hamill Pays Tribute

Carrie Fisher’s family is seeking to track down two off-duty emergency workers who came to the Star Wars actor’s assistance on her tragic last flight from London to Los Angeles, and managed to start her heart beating again after being unable to get a pulse for over 10 minutes.

Showbiz site TMZ reports that the family of Fisher wants to contact the two passengers—one of whom is believed to be a nurse—who answered the flight crew’s call to help Fisher over the aircraft’s public address system. The bereaved family, who lost Carrie’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, just days later, “believes if it wasn’t for them, they wouldn’t have had a few extra days to say goodbye,” TMZ reports.

Prior to landing at Los Angeles International on Dec. 23, the pilot of the United flight told the control tower that passengers aboard the plane were helping an “unresponsive passenger,” saying, “They’re working on her right now, we’re going to have them seated in about two minutes and we should hopefully be on the deck in about five.”

It is not known whether Fisher recovered consciousness; she died four days later.

Meanwhile, Mark Hamill, best known for his role in Star Wars as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia’s film brother, has penned a tribute to Carrie for The Hollywood Reporter.

“When you were in her good graces, you couldn’t have more fun with any person on the planet… And then you could go 180 degrees opposite, where you were furious with one another and wouldn’t speak for weeks and weeks,” wrote Hamill, who maintained a dignified public silence following her death.

“But that’s all part of what makes a relationship complete. It’s not all one-sided. Like I say, she was a handful. She was high maintenance. But my life would have been so much drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was.”

The pair met for the very first time at a dinner the night before they began filming Star Wars—and Hamill recalled how he had been completely “bowled over” by Fisher.

“I mean she was just so instantly ingratiating and funny and outspoken. She had a way of just being so brutally candid,” Hamill said. “I’d just met her but it was like talking to a person you’d known for 10 years. She was telling me stuff about her stepfather, about her mom, about [her father] Eddie Fisher—it was just harrowing in its detail. I kept thinking, ‘Should I know this?’ I mean, I wouldn’t have shared that with somebody that I had trusted for years and years and years. But she was the opposite. She just sucked you into her world.”

Carrie’s actress sister Joely told The Hollywood Reporter: “My sister would have wanted a dramatic exit; she just might have wished for another couple of decades before making one. She told me she wanted to see this political horror play out. She likely would have crafted a sharp, piercing novel about her non-conventional goings on with this national nightmare as the backdrop. But mostly, she would have wanted us to celebrate her life, her words, and for Billie to be whole. In time she will be. She is smart and soulful and magic.”