STARS pilot’s final dispatch: ‘You are cleared for retirement’
You could be forgiven for thinking Bob Young checks all the boxes to be a superhero.
For more than three decades, he’s worn a uniform and flown swiftly to the rescue of those facing the most dire of emergencies, helping save countless lives in the process.
Last week, STARS Air Ambulance’s longest-serving pilot flew his final mission, hanging up his night-vision-equipped flight helmet after 32 years of guiding the non-profit group’s signature red helicopters through pitch-black darkness, howling winds and blinding snow, all to give critically injured patients a fighting chance at survival.
“I don’t know how many lives have been saved over the years, but it wasn’t just me — it was a team,” said the 64-year-old Ontario native, who was one of STARS’ first pilots when he joined the organization in 1986.
“What I do know is, I’ve flown 3,138 missions. I’ve seen things nobody should be allowed to see. I’ve seen human tragedy I never want to see again.
“But I know no matter what, STARS will always be there.”
With STARS having flown some 40,000 missions since its inception in 1985, Young has been the pilot for nearly eight per cent of them.
But he’s quick to deflect any suggestion he’s any more integral than any other part of a well-oiled life-saving machine, which STARS dubs the chain of survival — the intricate network of first responders, air ambulance crews and emergency-room staff that work together to keep patients alive.
Young ’s last day on the job was a quiet one.
One mission was turned down due to inclement weather, the second scrubbed as medical crews at the scene determined a medevac wasn’t required.
As the hours of Young ’s long and illustrious career ticked down, he heard the shrill tones on the STARS radio transponder, a sound he’s heard thousands of times.
The dispatcher’s tinny voice crackled over the airwaves: “You are cleared for retirement.”
When Young packed up in the mid-’80s and headed west to join STARS, which had launched a year earlier as Lions Air Ambulance Service, it was a much different agency than it is today.
In its earliest days, the fledgling air ambulance service struggled to drum up donations and its future appeared uncertain, Young said.
“It was very, very rough. We weren’t getting paid quite as much as others in the industry, we worked much longer hours and we weren’t always sure if our paycheques would go through,” he said, noting of the quartet of pilots he started with, he’s the only one who stuck around longer than a year.
“We were living off small donations — $5 or $10, that kind of thing.
“After about seven or eight years, the oil companies began to get involved. People began to see that this is something they might need one day.”
Since those rocky early days, STARS has continued to grow and thrive, now operating a fleet of 11 high-tech rescue choppers split between six permanent bases in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The organization recently launched a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign to upgrade its air inventory.
Dr. JN Armstrong, chief medical officer and chief aviation officer for STARS, has sat side-by-side with Young in the cockpit of an Airbus BK117 on many missions as a relief captain, one of the many roles he’s served in his 27 years with the agency.
Armstrong said Young earned a reputation for consistency and professionalism, but one of his most striking traits was how rapidly he would respond to an emergency call, streaking to the hangar while others were still suiting up.
“He always pushed it to get out the door as fast as he could,” he said.
“I often wondered if he slept in his flight suit. Bob was always about getting to the patient quickly.”
In 2003, Young and Armstrong were the first civilian pilots in Canada to fly using night-vision goggles, putting the charity on the leading edge of a technological revolution in the aviation industry.
Looking back on 30-plus years, Young said he feels honoured to have shared the skies with a cadre of highly skilled and dedicated professionals whose abiding drive was to help those in need.
“What a great organization it was,” said Young, who plans to help run a campground his wife owns in Fort Steele, just outside of Cranbrook, B.C.