Doctor rescued by ALERT to share story at banquet

Ground ambulance responders held the electrocardiogram results into the light as they stood over their patient on a ridge near Lakeside. From his fetal position on the ground, Tony Young could see the image of his heart’s electrical activity making waves across the sheet.

“That’s when I knew I was having a heart attack,” Young said.

Young closed his eyes and listened for the sound of a helicopter as he heard crew members making the call to ALERT — the Advanced Life-support and Emergency Rescue Team.

On Nov. 5, 2016, Young was working his way up an old logging trail on dirt bikes with a friend when he began to feel dizzy. The trail was spotted with fallen logs. The riders worked together to push one bike over a log, then return for the other.

“I couldn’t catch my breath, but it’s something I did all the time,” Young, 50, said. “But when we made it to the ridge, I still didn’t feel right.”

Young removed his layers down to his shirt and jeans and watched steam roll off his body. He felt dizzy and struggled to talk or move his arms.

An anesthesiologist at St. Luke Community Hospital in Ronan, Young knew it was time to call for help.

As his friend gave their coordinates to a 911 operator, Young retraced the route they had taken in his mind.

“I thought, ‘if they can’t get to us, how am I going to get us out of here?’” he said.

Soon, they heard an ambulance trying to make its way up the path. Young’s friend ran down to meet the crew. Alone, Young could hear the emergency responders making their way to him.

“I kept thinking ‘so this is how it feels,’” Young said. “I was waiting for either something really good to happen or something really bad to happen — it felt like I had a lot of time to think about that.”

The field electrocardiogram confirmed Young was having a severe heart attack. As he counted his breaths to focus on something, a Kalispell Regional Medical Center flight paramedic, flight nurse and pilot plugged in his coordinates.

SINCE its 1975 inception, ALERT has made more than 16,000 flights and has saved roughly 1,500 lives, according to hospital statistics.

Kalispell Regional Healthcare is celebrating ALERT’s 41st anniversary this year. Celebrations will peak on Saturday night with the program’s 39th annual fundraising banquet.

Last year the banquet raised more than $190,000 for the program’s non-operational needs, such as pilot training and air ambulance equipment.

Tagen Vine with Kalispell Regional Healthcare Foundation said the hospital will unveil its plan at the banquet to replace the 17-year-old helicopter, “so that we have ALERT for the next decade plus.”

The hospital intends to purchase a newer model of what it already has, a Bell 407 GXP helicopter. The helicopter will cost roughly $4 million.

Vine said purchasing the same model helicopter means the program will have existing inventory for replacement parts. He said it also means ALERT won’t have to plug more dollars into retraining pilots.

“The special announcement will show the plan we have in place to hopefully have the new helicopter sometime this summer,” Vine said.

YOUNG plans to share his rescue story at the annual banquet.

Young said as he began feeling medicine work through his system on the flight to Kalispell, he was already surprised by the elements that lined up leading to his rescue.

“We were in an area I normally went to by myself that typically had no cell service or areas for a helicopter to land,” he said. “I truly was being watched over by God.”

The day Young was set to leave the hospital, he got a visit from the ALERT crew.

“We hugged and cried a bit and I thought, ‘but these guys do it all the time,’” Young said. “Then I realized when they’re called, there’s typically not a lot of options, often, they may not get to save the person. But no matter how bad it looks, they will arrive. They’ll try.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.