Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CLEARWATER, Fla. — She was lying on the cement sidewalk bleeding out, but still barely alive. It's hardly how Cameron Hill expected to see the love of his life for the first time. As it turned out, that's the way it was.
Hill was one of the first people on the scene of the attempted murder of Melissa Dohme. She was stabbed 32 times, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend who had been texting her all day, saying he needed to see her. It was a miracle she was still alive.
Still, as Hill tells it, when he put her onto the medical helicopter to fly her to the hospital, he knew somehow she would be part of his life.
"I don't know why, but I knew I'd see her again," the 38-year-old firefighter-paramedioc told the Tampa Bay Times. "I believed she would live."
Dohme was 20 at the time, a student at St. Petersburg College before the stabbing. After, she returned to school and began speaking around at high schools and churches about her experience. That's where she met Hill.
Though it was technically their second meeting, it appears to have been love at first sight.
"I was weirdly giddy," she said. "I had this feeling about him."
They exchanged information and had their first date not long afterward, just after Dohme's graduation.
What the future holds for the couple is not clear, but Dohme said they are, right now, equal partners and best friends, spending every day together.
"When I look back on that night, I can't think of it as all bad anymore because I met Cameron," she said. "He's the one I've been waiting for. My fairy tale."
