Calendar campaign ‘a big deal’ for STARS air ambulance service
Thursday, Aug. 25, 2014, started out as just a regular day for Chad Rogers.
The Assiniboia farmer was getting ready to start haying. He drove his tractor and baler out to his pasture and, knowing the emergency brake was weak, left it at the top of a hill before the gate he needed to unlatch.
As he neared the gate on foot, he heard the click of the emergency brake letting go. The tractor started rolling toward him down the hill. He ran toward the tractor and tried to climb up the ladder, but ended up falling.
The 15,000-pound tractor and baler rolled over his midsection.
Remaining conscious and finding his cellphone still in his jeans pocket, he texted his mother, who called 9-1-1. An ambulance picked him up and brought him to Moose Jaw. He had a shattered pelvis, cracked vertebrae, a 75-per-cent tear in a main ligament of his right knee, and was losing a lot of blood through internal bleeding.
“The doctor in the emergency room literally tied me together with bed sheets until STARS could get there with the brace, so things were starting to go downhill quick. That’s why they called in STARS,” said Rogers.
STARS airlifted him to Regina for emergency surgery.
“If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here ... so it means everything to me and my family,” he said.
Now Rogers helps out with the STARS annual fundraising calendar campaign as a way of giving back to the organization he believes saved his life.
This calendar campaign is a large part of the organization’s fundraising, said STARS president and CEO Andrea Robertson at the campaign launch Thursday morning.
“We net over $1 million with the calendar every year across Western Canada. It’s a big deal for us. So where does $1 million go? It goes right into fuelling the helicopter, paying for our staff,” she said.
To allow all the funds raised from the calendars to go directly to STARS, Viterra is sponsoring the calendar printing and production, as it has for the past three years, said Viterra president and CEO Kyle Jeworski.
“We’ve also had a few staff that were directly impacted by STARS that were airlifted, and they both are doing extremely well today,” he said. “It’s a natural fit between Viterra and STARS.”
The 2019 calendars are now available to the public for $30. Representatives will be going door-to-door with the calendars, or they can be ordered at starscalendar.ca or by calling 1-877-7788288.