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Good news: Air Evac's first survivor - 20 years later
For twenty years, Air Evac Lifeteam 39 has been saving lives. Caleb Moore knows this better than almost anyone.
On April 2, 2004, Moore was a high school senior at Northview on his way to school with a friend. What happened next changed his life forever.
Less than a mile from the Air Evac base, Moore was severely injured in a two-car collision.
"Looked left, looked right, I didn't see any cars coming. I pulled out, looked left, and there was the car. It was actually another senior. We were all seniors," explained Moore.
Moore says he could have bled out if not for Sandra Pearson, an Air Evac flight nurse who came upon the wreck on her way home from a shift. She skipped a few standard procedures and called Air Evac out immediately.
Moore says there were countless blessings that day, from Pearson being a bystander to his friend forgetting the pocket knife in his jeans, which could have cut Moore's seatbelt, releasing the pressure, but could have caused him to bleed out faster.
"We later found out that the wires were still live. The power had been cut to the wrong part. We were more lucky than we even realized, not only myself but all the crew."
Moore's injuries included a shattered spleen, a collapsed lung, five broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and internal bleeding. He received multiple blood transfusions and spent a week at Methodist Hospital.
Moore graduated on time, thanks to teachers who came to his house and homeschooled him. After being in a wheelchair, using a walker, and months of physical therapy, he was finally able to return to school. On his first day back, Air Evac flew him in, landing between North Clay and Northview.
A few years later, Pearson lost her life in a helicopter crash.
"Sandy Pearson, who saved my life four years later, on August 31, 2008, I believe, was still working Air Evac, and there was something wrong with the propeller, and it detached from the helicopter, and she and the other flight crew passed away."
As the twentieth-anniversary approaches, Moore says he'll do what he's always done to show his gratitude: bring the crew at Air Evac cookies or a meal.
"I want to draw attention to them (Air Evac). They had just got here (in Brazil). I was the third person they had taken; the first two passed away, and I believe the next two after me passed away. I believe the one after me had very similar injuries. You can definitely attribute that to her (Pearson) skipping procedure and a lot of things that happened that day."
Moore has a beautiful family with a wife and three children twenty years later. He recently started a new job as a financial adviser and published his first book, "The Fox That Had Toots." He says he has Air Evac and Pearson to thank.
"I hope that I've touched lives. I wrote a kid's book, and that's just a small thing, but it brings happiness to kids, and that's great. I plan on writing a second one."
On vacation one year, Moore and his brother saved a child's life from a riptide.
"We saved this boy's life out in the ocean. When I sit here and think about what's happened because I'm still here, and then multiply that by so many because Air Evac has been in the community for 20 years."