“Oh my gosh, he’s in our lane!”

Even as the words left Kem’s mouth, the huge Ford F350 crested the hill and collided at full speed (nearly 80 miles per hour) into the rented minivan. The date was June 21, 2007; the place, a stretch of highway 50 in Colorado between Canon City and Royal Gorge.

Not What They Expected

That anyone could be extricated alive from the crumpled mass of metal that had been a new Chevy Uplander is impossible to imagine, but Kem’s wife Lauri survived. “I was in a little cocoon. Everything was smashed around me,” she recalled in an interview months later. She was rushed by ambulance to St. Thomas More hospital in Canon City where doctors saw massive injuries, including a lacerated liver and bladder and shattered pelvis. Kem suffered only minor cuts and bruises. The couple’s teenaged daughters, Alex and Sarah, managed to get out of the car, both badly hurt. Alex had a ruptured spleen and broken ribs. Sarah had compression fractures in her lower spine. (The driver of the truck was unharmed.) The family was on vacation from their home in Florida, traveling to Royal Gorge for whitewater rafting and horseback riding. Like any other vacationers, they expected a good time, not a catastrophe.

Finding a Way Home

“Air Compassion America. This is Clara.”

The call to the organization’s lead mission coordinator came from Florida on June 28, 2008. The person on the line was Lauri’s sister, Suzanne, who was looking for a way to bring Lauri home. She’d learned of Air Compassion America from a friend and colleague of Kem’s, a fellow air traffic controller named Steve. Read the rest of this entry »

At Piedmont regional airport, the waiting room was full, the ground ambulance was on the tarmac, and all eyes were on the runway. Dewey was coming home! The 84-year-old father and grandfather from Key West, Fla., was due to land at 5:30 p.m. Air Compassion America arranged the flight to Norfolk where the partially paralyzed man would be staying with his daughter Pat until a bed at Norfolk General hospital in Virginia could be found. Read the rest of this entry »

For 89-year-old Clara V., a post-stroke victim with no use of her legs, the nightmare of Katrina became unbearable. She was in a New Orleans nursing home when a nearby levee ruptured. Clara was evacuated to the rehab wing of River West Medical Center in Plaquemine, La., but because she had been without her psychiatric medications, she suffered from dementia and began hallucinating. Only one family member, a niece named Cindy W., from Marietta, Ga., was able to take her in, but no funds were available for an air ambulance flight.

Once the elderly woman was stabilized, Air Compassion America (ACAM) provided a charitable flight on Sept. 12 in a Citation jet to take her from Baton Rouge to Atlanta. Flight time was about an hour and a half; the cost, paid in full by ACAM, was $5,516.Cindy says the flight was fabulous and that she is telling everyone about Air Compassion. She spends six hours a day with her Aunt Clara, who is cared for in a nursing home and called “Sassy” by the other residents! Clara turned 90 on Dec. 12.

Frank, 73, and his wife Marion, 74, were stranded in a New Orleans hospital following Katrina. Frank, a Parkinson’s patient, had been evacuated to Bunkie General Hospital, and Marion was by his side. Without medication, his condition had worsened and he was curled up in a fetal position. The couple lost everything in the hurricane and had nowhere to go. Their daughter, Cheryl, who lives in California, called ACAM with hopes of getting an air ambulance so her parents could join her.

ACAM was able to arrange and fund a flight on Sept. 9, with Frank and Marion traveling on a Lear 25 jet. The plane was staffed with a nurse and a respiration therapist. Frank was admitted to Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, Calif., and Marion moved in with her daughter.