Lillington family trying to bring home woman critically hurt in Colorado hit-and-run

Ashley Schachter, 22, was on her way to work at a local college on May 1 when she was hit. Witnesses told police that the driver stopped briefly and could be heard asking someone on the phone what to do before jumping back in her car and driving off.

"To know that she got out of her car saw what she did to my daughter and then left the scene of what she did, it just baffles me how someone could just do that," Brandy Schachter said Wednesday.

Ashley Schachter, a Harnett Central High School graduate who had moved to Denver only weeks earlier after spending several years doing community service work through AmeriCorps, suffered a traumatic brain injury along with fractures in her spine, hip, legs, left ankle and collarbone.

"I didn't recognize my daughter, and I basically hit the floor," Brandy Schachter said, recalling the first time she saw her in the hospital. "It was, I mean, all the trauma and the bruises, everything, it was just overwhelming that I didn't even recognize my own daughter."

Chad Schachter, a disabled Iraq War veteran, has stayed in Denver since the crash to be with his daughter and to try find clues to help with the investigation of the hit-and-run, which remains unsolved.

"I had no idea if she was going to be alive or not when I got here," he told NBC affiliate KUSA.

"The doctors gave her a 5 percent chance of survival," Brandy Schachter said, noting part of her daughter's skull had to be removed to relieve pressure on her swelling brain.

But Ashley Schachter has made progress in recent weeks.

"She'll squeeze my hand. She moves her arms and legs to let us know that she hears us," her mother said.

Now, the family is trying to raise money to move her from Colorado to North Carolina via air ambulance, which costs upwards of $18,000.

"Being closer to what she knows – it is very, very important that she comes home," Brandy Schachter said.

"Any kind of positive brain stimulation is going to be good for her recovery. That's why we want to get her back to North Carolina," Chad Schachter said. "She has a lot more friends that can visit her there, that want to see her. She has more family that can visit her there."