KALISPELL, Mont. – Cherokee Nation citizen Sarah Wohlwend was named the 2026 Montana Child Passenger Safety Technician of the year, a statewide honor for those who provide leadership, advocacy, education and service in child passenger safety.
Wohlwend is a registered nurse and the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Staff Development Educator at Logan Health Children’s Hospital in Montana.
“When I took that role, the director of the women’s and children’s hospital asked if I would become a car seat tech, and so I did that,” she said.
For the past four years, she has been the leader of Logan Health’s Child Passenger Safety Work Group where she coordinates meetings, provides education for certified technicians and supports staff throughout the organization.
Her hospital also partners with the Flathead County Health Department, specifically with Child Passenger Safety Instructor Wendy Olson.
“She’s been very instrumental as well, helping us develop policies. We have developed a program where we’re able to provide car seats to lower-income families that aren’t able to purchase a new one if needed,” Wohlwend said. “I’ve just really tried to bring a car seat program to the hospital, and then just encourage other staff to become car seat techs as well.”
She said the need for more car seat techs is important, especially in more rural areas with low-income families. She often participates in community car seat checkup events to help families “identify installation errors and ensuring children are properly secured while traveling,” according to logan.org.
“We do have a lot of families that are low income that sometimes can’t afford car seats, or they buy one off Facebook Marketplace or somewhere like that, and you don’t know the history of that car seat. So, just having more staff aware of the things that we need to be teaching parents, caregivers … regarding car seat safety and how important it is and how it truly saves children’s lives whenever they are trained properly,” Wohlwend said.
She said her hospital also works with surrounding reservations whose tribal citizens come for services.
“They often get sent here because we are the only children’s hospital in the state of Montana,” she said. “We do see a lot of children from the tribes and that is who we often end up helping with their car seats because they don’t seem to have a lot of resources available to them. It’s been rewarding to be able to help them, whether it’s installing the car seat or just giving them a car seat to help get them back home.”
If a car seat tech is not available, she said people can visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website for more information.
“You enter information about your child, like their height and weight, etc. Then it pulls up a graph for you so that you can see what type of car seat is the best recommendation for your child,” she said.
Wohlwend said it came as a shock to her when she learned she won the award for her work.
“I felt really honored. I was really surprised to receive it but also felt very honored that colleagues recognized the work that was happening because I feel like a lot of it is behind the scenes that maybe people don’t really see what all we are doing,” she said. “I think it just gave me the motivation to become even more vocal about it.”
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