CT-based Life Star has been in the air for 40 years. That's 40,000+ flights, tens of thousands saved

Yahoo

30-05-2025

Life Star, the critical care air medical transport service, has been in the skies of Connecticut for decades.
This June, the service is celebrating 40 years of service.
Life Star provides air transport for a variety of patients who require care at a specialized medical facility that focuses on complex medical procedures and treatments. The service is operational seven days a week, 24-hours a day and is available to patients within a 150-mile radius surrounding the bases at Midstate Medical Center in Meriden, one at William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich and Westfield Barnes Airport in Westfield, Massachusetts.
The fleet includes two American Eurocopter EC-145's and one American Eurocopter EC-135 which can travel 155 miles per hour.
Life Star, which is staffed by a flight nurse, flight respiratory therapist, pilot, mechanic and communication specialist, serves between 1,200 and 1,400 people annually, according to Hartford HealthCare. A typical day has two or three calls. In 40 years, there have been more than 40,000 flights.
Vietnam veteran Richard Magner was at the controls for the first-ever Life Star call. On June 18, 1985, he came for the night shift and the initial call happened around midnight. He had to fly to Route 44 in Canton along with Dr. Len Jacobs, a trauma surgeon, and a flight nurse and respiratory therapist.
'Because it was at night, I could see the emergency lights for quite some distance,' Magner said. 'It makes it easier to fly at night. I liked to fly at night in Vietnam. The landing was uneventful on that first call. We went back to Hartford, and it was a successful initial mission.'
Magner said there were three total pilots when Life Star began in 1985. He said in the early years, each pilot averaged 100 missions a year. Magner estimated that he completed 5,000 flights during his career.
'When I would get a call at night, a phone or loud buzzer would go off and I would immediately go into the bathroom and put cold water on my face to wake up,' Magner said. 'I put my jump suit on. I would get on the computer, make the evaluation and then get to the helicopter.'
Now retired, Magner lives in Glastonbury right on the Life Star path to Hartford. He said many times he will go outside and look at the helicopter in the air and could tell the aircraft by the unique sound.
'I missed flying and I don't think I would have missed it so much if the helicopter didn't fly over my house every day,' Magner said with a laugh. 'In the middle of the night I can hear it a long, long ways away. I wake up imagining being at the controls. But there is a time in your life where you have to do other things.'
Jacobs saw the need for this type of care well before that initial launch.
'Generally, we see patients when they get to the hospital and into the operating room,' Jacobs said. 'What we found is people were not doing so well. They were bleeding to death from very bad injuries and getting worse. Why is that? Because the time of the injury to the definitive care is long. That message is old, but you don't know it until you live it.
'If you come to Connecticut, we are a small state. We aren't Texas if you are hurt people think you are just down the road,' he said. 'But you are not. If you are injured in Winsted or Barkhamsted, someone has to see you. Someone has to call. Somebody has to respond. That person has to assess.
'Years ago, a volunteer ambulance came. They have to get that patient into that ambulance and drive them 20-40 minutes to Hartford,' Jacobs said. 'By the time that is done, you are looking at a better part of a half hour to an hour of that person being injured to being in the hospital. That's a long time. We would like to bring that back to 10-15 minutes.'
The criteria to have Life Star deployed is for the patient to have a 10% chance of dying. First responders make the call, and Jacobs said they never second guess them. He said the goal of Life Star was to bring the hospital to the patient to give them a better chance to live.
So, what does that mean?
'You have to have an alert system. At the beginning it was a doctor, nurse and a therapist. They have to have a beeper. When the beeper goes off, they have to stop what they are doing and get to the elevator and zip to the roof. The pilot jumps into the plane,' Jacobs said.
According to Jacobs, once they are on the aircraft, the crew members learn where they are going and what type of trauma they are aiding. In all, they are in the air about five minutes after the initial call.
'When you come down you have to get your wits about you and assess your patients,' Jacobs said. 'Get them in and start the IV and get the patient evaluated and communicate with the hospital what you have, and you have about 10-to-12 minutes before you get to where you are going.'
'The crew has to be ready to care for a newborn, someone experiencing a heart attack or a major trauma from a motorcycle or car accident or gunshot wound.'
When the helicopter arrives back to the hospital, there is a whole other team waiting.
'In all, there is a team of 60 including the emergency room that has to come together on very short notice to take care of the patient,' Jacobs said. 'We began to get better outcomes. … You have to be prepared and committed. You have to be able to do your job rain or shine, dark or bright sunshine. But you saw a big difference in outcomes.'
Erik Freidenfelds, 55, said his life was saved by Life Star on Oct. 31, 2024. He suffered a heart attack known as a widow maker as his left anterior descending artery to his heart was 100% blocked.
Freidenfelds, who is in the environmental field, and his wife of 21 years, Ellen, were in the midst of their morning workout at their Preston home. Freidenfelds said he felt a 'little twinge between his shoulders' but didn't think much of it. He went downstairs where his wife was using a treadmill. He did the rowing machine for 30 minutes. As he went upstairs to get ready for work, he suddenly started sweating profusely but wasn't feeling any pain.
Freidenfelds said he went to find his wife, who is a hospice nurse and former paramedic. She quickly determined this was serious situation. She rushed to her car to get some paramedic equipment and laid her husband on the kitchen floor so he on a hard surface in case she had to give him CPR. She then called 911 and kept her husband talking. Preston Ambulance showed up shortly after, and Freidenfelds was on his way to Backus Hospital.
'I wasn't in much pain, maybe a two out of 10 but they did an echocardiogram, sent the results to Hartford and then they came back a few minutes later to tell me I would be transported to Hartford,' Freidenfelds said.
'The Life Star crew was phenomenal,' Freidenfelds said. 'Never once did the crew make me feel like anything was seriously wrong. You would have never known anything was going on. You felt like you were just going on a plane going somewhere.'
Nurse Sam Mercer, who has been a part of the Life Star crew for five years, was on the flight with Freidenfelds.
'He was having a heart attack and looked very sick when we saw him,' Mercer said. 'He was very clammy and there was something going on. … We provide speed.'
Freidenfelds recalled that the flight felt like it lasted two minutes.
'Then rolled the gurney out the back and took me in,' Freidenfelds said. 'The staff met me up there and escorted me to the Cath lab.'
Freidenfelds was prepped and underwent a medical procedure on his heart. By the time he was done, his wife was still driving to Hartford.
'They called my wife and told them who they were and there was a silence, and I said in the background that I was OK,' Freidenfelds said. 'There is no doubt the importance of Life Star.'
Freidenfelds said his life is back to normal. He is back working out five days a week with his wife before work.
'I think about if I wasn't on Life Star and if I was in that ambulance for an hour, would I be functioning like I am where I could do a full day's work?' Freidenfelds said. 'In my mind, it's why I'm here right now and I smile when I see it in the air now. I'm also thankful to my wife for being there and caring for me.'
So where will Life Star be 40 years from now?
'I think it will still be here,' Jacobs said. 'We will still be moving sick patients. Technology is always improving.'
He said the sustainability of Life Star is what makes him so proud.
'It's very humbling and it's very gratifying and the reason is, if you have a huge problem and if you solve the problem, you feel good,' Jacobs said. 'But if you solve the problem and sustain it, it means it was really not you, but it was a good enough solution that other people could take that solution and improve on it. That's what I feel go so about. We didn't do it for five years and stopped. Some of the people on Life Star weren't born when it first started.'
Jacobs noted that the crew who ride on Life Star are incredibly talented and devoted to their work.
'It takes a special person to respond anytime to anything anywhere,' Jacobs said. 'When you are in a hospital you have a unit. The crew on Life Star have to be fully trained across the spectrum. Not every run is going to go well, and you have to internalize that. You have to learn and incorporate what you learned into practice and move on. … It's not easy.'
Flight nurse Chris Winebarger, who has been a member of the Life Star crew for the last 17 years, acknowledged that what they are able to do for the patients is unlike anything else.
'We move quickly,' Winebarger added. 'If they need the care, we are going to provide it.'