It Saves Lives, Cushions Pain of Devastating Illnesses : Pilot Group Racks Up 405 Medical Missions of Mercy

Despite concern for the ice on the snow-covered runway, Denver businessman Peter Kooi brought his sleek executive jet to an easy stop at the frigid Billings airport, completing a mission of mercy for the two very special and thankful passengers traveling with him.

He was bringing home to Billings a tiny, 6-month-old cancer patient and her mother from a week of chemotherapy in Denver--and how they came to be aboard Kooi’s corporate jet is a story of one man’s idea for a network of pilots who voluntarily fly medical missions of mercy to save lives or to cushion the pain of devastating illnesses for families nationwide.

730 Pilots, 42 States

Kooi is one of 730 pilots in 42 states and the District of Columbia linked by AirLifeLine, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization of volunteer pilots.

Never Had to Say No

In the last six years, they have flown 405 medically related missions of mercy--a quarter-million miles--without ever having had to say no. Providing the wings that make medical help a reality for many, they have delivered an unspoken statement that someone cares.

The day after Kooi’s flight, designed to spare one family the financial devastation of long-distance medical treatment, another pilot would fly a 4-year-old leukemia victim home for Thanksgiving to Auburn, Calif., from his hospital bed in Palo Alto.

On Monday, volunteer pilots in Florida are scheduled to fly four pediatricians from Orlando to Mexico City, where they will help re-establish a hospital pediatric ward destroyed in the huge earthquake of September.

Sight-Saving Surgery

Then on Thursday four pilots will make AirLifeLine’s ninth trip to Mexico, where four doctors and a nurse will spend four days performing sight-saving surgery.

And at any time of any day before, in between or after those flights, an AirLifeLine pilot may be called to swiftly transport an organ for transplantation.

“You’re taking flying, a totally personal thing, and saying: ‘Hey, I can do something with it and give help to someone who can really use it,’ ” said Tom Goodwin, the 41-year-old Sacramento businessman and private pilot who set AirLife-Line in motion in 1978 when he noticed the unused potential of hundreds of private planes sitting idly on Tarmacs or being flown for personal recreation.

“Once you see the effects, you’re hooked. You know in your heart you’re doing something positive for someone else,” he said.

‘A Kid With Cancer’

“Everybody wants to help somebody if they can,” said Kooi, the 57-year-old president of North Park Transportation Co., an interstate trucking firm in Denver. On his second AirLifeLine mission, the flight to Billings, he acknowledges: “We weren’t coming this way today, but we’re going to make it work by putting together some business here.

“We would have made the trip sometime, anyhow.”

“I think it’s just great,” said his passenger, Glena Wambeke, 29, whose daughter, Veronica, was diagnosed as having a malignant facial tumor last summer and who must travel to Denver every two weeks for a week of treatment. “I didn’t realize how many people out there really care.”

“People who have a kid with cancer are overwhelmed anyway with a lot of difficult concerns, but AirLifeLine is one way a family feels it’s getting support from someone,” said Dana Shepard, a social worker in the oncology department at Denver’s Children’s Hospital who referred the Wambekes to AirLifeLine.

‘Tragic Circumstances’

Children’s Hospital, a regional center providing the remote and thinly populated Rocky Mountains with the latest childhood cancer treatment, calls AirLifeLine twice a month, Shepard said. “Without this kind of transportation service, people would have to pay a fortune to get the kind of care they need,” he added.

“With the tragic circumstances of the families we’re helping, AirLifeLine is probably the only bright spot: Someone is there to take off the burden of transportation,” said Dorothy Simonelli, administrative director of AirLife-Line, who first became involved with the group by donating mother’s milk that AirLifeLine flew to an allergic infant whose mother had been murdered and who could not survive on formula.

Initially established to fly blood, organs and other tissue, AirLife-Line decided a year ago to include ambulatory patients in its mission--a decision that has swelled its log of Good Samaritan deeds; after six years of flying, it recorded its 300th mission in July and took only four more months to break 400.

Supported by Donations

It is supported by tax-deductible donations, about $30,000 worth this year, that help fund the long-distance phone calls and mailings that make AirLifeLine work. (The group’s address is 1011 Saint Andrews Drive, Suite I, El Dorado Hills, Calif., 95630.)

“We’re really on a shoestring,” said Simonelli, who coordinates missions.

Pilots donate their fuel, which can be tax deductible, as well as their time and planes. All are required to meet AirLifeLine’s strict standards. “It is not seat-of-the-pants,” said Goodwin, the founder, who has flown perhaps 12 to 15 AirLifeLine missions himself. “It’s very professional.”

For example, Kooi has been flying for 40 years and now pilots his company’s jet around the Rocky Mountains, tying together the network of his trucking terminals. His was Wambeke’s third AirLifeLine flight as she virtually commutes with her daughter Veronica from her home in nearby Laurel, Mont., to Denver.

‘Really Helps Financially’

She and her husband, Ron, have been faced with the burden of paying $400 for each air round trip to Denver for Veronica’s chemotherapy. Already, they have been pressed into using community contributions to pay their home mortgage because of Glena Wambeke’s lost work days.

“It really helps out financially,” Glena Wambeke, a long-distance operator with AT&T;, said as she cradled a sleeping Veronica on her lap. Doctors recently stepped up treatment of the infant’s cancer to every two weeks. “Insurance companies don’t pay for the travel.”

“At $400 a trip . . . I really don’t know how we would do it,” said Ron Wambeke, 27, a foreman in a paper company warehouse. “We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t do it without some help.”