Flight Nurse Jenn Killeen Sees Both Sides Now

Jenn Killeen was never squeamish about blood. 

JENN KILLEEN: I was just fascinated by it. And I always actually growing up as a child, wanted to, um, perform autopsies. I thought that was just fascinating. How did the human body work? 

So she set out to become a doctor. But a friend convinced her to go to nursing school so she could make money sooner. Fresh out of college she was hired to be a nurse in the emergency department at Flagstaff Medical Center. 

JENN KILLEEN:  I saw helicopters landing bringing in really sick people. And I thought that might be it. That might be the job right there.

Jenn applied to be a flight nurse that cares for people injured or sick in the middle of nowhere. The southwest is a beautiful but dangerous place. So often when someone injures themselves -- even if it’s just a fractured ankle -- if they’re in the Grand Canyon or on the remote Hualapai reservation -- that injury could be their demise. That’s where emergency helicopters come in.

JENN KILLEEN:  I never knew what I was going to face. The more pressure I'm under, the better. LAUREL: Is that why you do it? JENN KILLEEN: Yeah. I love it. I love it. Um, I love the adrenaline stress. I'm not an adrenaline junkie and I don't like doing those high adrenaline things, but I like puzzles and I like challenges. It's the adrenaline of, I think I just saved somebody. We just saved somebody. We helped somebody on their worst day, uh, in their biggest emergency on their worst nightmare.

But what happens when the nightmare starts right there, in the helicopter. 

This is 2 Lives -- stories of people who’s worst days change them in some way. I’m Laurel Morales.

Jenn Killeen called her flight crew at Classic Air Medical “family.” They have bases similar to fire stations. Instead of firetrucks there are helicopters and small planes. You get to know each other really well when you are doing a sometimes dangerous job and you’re living together.

JENN KILLEEN: You live with people and you have to hammer some things out, right? You were up in the middle of the night using the ice maker and it woke me up ...You have, I couldn't save a dying child bonding and going through hard, hard, hard things together. And then you go through successes. And you have this trust.

In June of 2008 Jenn was eight months pregnant. Her belly was too big to fit into her flight suit so she had to borrow one of the guys.

JENN KILLEEN: It was miserable. Oh. But I flew the whole time. I felt horrible. I threw up on every flight. I flew, I could look at an aircraft and throw up... Ready for that part to be over, ready for it to be over. You were ready ...in a big way. Ready? Yeah. Yes.

It had taken her a long time to get pregnant so in her third trimester when her doctor told her no more flying she complied.

JENN KILLEEN: Flying takes a little physicality a little more risk so my physician said, ‘let's just have you work in the emergency department…’

So that’s where she was on the afternoon of June 29, 2008. Her crew had alerted her they were bringing in a patient so she was getting the trauma room ready.

That’s when she heard a woman slam through the Emergency Department doors and yell, “I just saw a helicopter crash!!”

JENN KILLEEN: And we looked at her and we said, ‘what, what?’ She said, ‘I just saw a helicopter crash’ and she was physically shaken, um, crying. And so we walked out the back door and that's when we heard the explosion.

I remember the sound. I was at home that day with a newborn napping and I heard the thunderous boom from our house. I remember because I was afraid it would wake up my daughter. 

Jenn didn’t know it yet, but two helicopters had crashed midair and fallen out of the sky over McMillan Mesa just a quarter mile from the hospital. She called 911 and her dispatch.

JENN KILLEEN: ...and said, ‘I think we have a problem.’ My communication center said, ‘what, what are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I am standing outside the emergency department and I am seeing smoke. I heard an explosion. I said, I think we have a helicopter down and now I'm contacting you.’

Jenn remembers what was going through her head...

JENN KILLEEN: I'm sure they're fine. They're walking away. They walked away. They're they're okay. I know they're okay. I immediately turned around, walked right back into the ER and I said, I gotta go. I looked at my charge nurse and said, I’m out.

All she could think about was her two best friends who were flying that day.

JENN KILLEEN: I didn't know which aircraft and what crew was coming in. I just, I knew they were flying. So I'm trying to call their personal phones without answer, which was a little troubling, um, a lot troubling. So I kept dialing and dialing while I'm walking out to my car. And then I called my husband. 

He thought there was something wrong with the baby.

JENN KILLEEN: He said is, ‘is the baby okay?’ And I was like, yeah, the helicopter crashed. And he goes, ‘what are you talking about? You're not, you're at work. You're in the ER, what do you, what are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I think our helicopter crashed up on the mesa. I'm going there. And I hung up.

She got in her car and drove toward the plume of smoke, a five minute car ride. She parked, got out of the car and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of smoke. 

JENN KILLEEN: Lots of smoke pungent eyes burning. Oh, chemical, you know, um, oil burning, aluminum, everything. It's just fire. Lots of smoke, um, pungent eyes burning. Yeah. Not a good situation. 

AUDIO FROM CRASH 

Classic had several flights in the air that day. There’s no way of knowing the chances of Jenn being on one of them. 

Firefighters were working to put out the blaze surrounding the crash. A police officer was trying to cordon off the area.

JENN KILLEEN: And I mowed right past that police officer. And I felt a little bad about that, but here's my pregnant waddle self, trying to get up the hill and figure out what the heck was going on.

As a reporter at the time I also drove up to the base of McMillan Mesa, a forested hill next to a neighborhood and what is today my kid’s school. I saw a tangle of metal, a helicopter blade, a tail, smoke. I gathered what little information I could, filed a news report with NPR and went home.

Jenn was still trying to figure out what the hell happened and get a hold of her friends.

JENN KILLEEN: I finally got a phone call back. And that was a really hard phone call because I could not, at that point within protocol, divulge information. I gotta figure out what's going on first before I panic anybody. But, um, I got a phone call back from the paramedic that I was trying to call earlier. And he said, ‘what's up?’ I said, ‘where are you? What are you doing?’ And hearing his voice was really good for me...he said, ‘well, we're transporting a patient right now.’ I said, ‘turn around to go back.’ And I said, ‘it's bad, whatever, this is, it's bad.’ And he said, ‘okay, I copy.’

DANNY:  To hear the concern in her voice. And at the same time, I think I could hear a little bit of relief that the two of us were not involved in this accident, and at the same time, just this absolute gutted that some friends of ours just died. 

Jenn didn’t want her friend Danny Cox or anyone finding out about the crash while they were in the air. They needed time to process what had happened. 

Danny, a firefighter turned flight medic, was also getting lots of phone calls from Flagstaff firefighters.

DANNY COX:  I pick up the phone, I'd say, hey, hello. And they go, good enough for me, you know? 

Back at the crash site Jenn walked toward a mangled helicopter when a doctor who knew Jenn spotted her and tried to turn her away from the accident.

JENN: He took me by the shoulders and said, where are you going? I said, I'm trying to figure out what's going on. He said, you need to go back down here, come on, come with me. And he goes, are you done flying now? I said, I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. I'm done. LAUREL: Meaning forever, forever, JENN: Meaning forever.

And at that moment she meant it… At that moment all she could think about was her baby and keeping her safe. 

She kept searching for incident command, someone to tell her what had happened. That’s when she saw someone else who worked in medical transport for a company called Guardian.

JENN KILLEEN: She said, ‘Jenn, what are you doing here? It's not your helicopter.’ And at that moment was a pretty scary realization of, well, then where's my helicopter. Where's my service?

Turns out the Classic helicopter was in a heap in the trees at the bottom of the hill. 

JENN KILLEEN: And at that point in time, we heard a radio call that said, we have CPR in progress. 

If CPR’s in progress, that means someone on that aircraft is still alive, even if just barely. A firefighter saw a hand move. He was dangling upside down in a tree still buckled in. They cut his seatbelt and transported the three crew members and patient from the Classic helicopter to the hospital. Jenn and her medical director both heard the call. 

JENN KILLEEN: He looked at me and he said, I said, let's go, let's go help. We got to go help. Um, so we left the scene and went back to the hospital.

When Jenn arrived at the hospital she found the pilot, nurse, and medic from her company in the trauma bays. She ran to their side.

JENN KILLEEN: The hardest thing for me was sitting outside and seeing all three of the crew members from our aircraft being in resuscitation in the trauma bays. PAUSE I had to essentially identify crew members.  That was hard. It was horrible but I got to hold their hands.

Three of the four people on Classic’s helicopter -- the pilot, medic, and the 26-year-old patient they were transporting -- did not survive.

JENN KILLEEN: I got to tell Tom Cauldwell the pilot that he did, everything he could. I know he did. I got to tell Tom Claussing that he did too. The really hard thing for me having a hard time recognizing James because of trauma, I knew it was him. I read his badge. I knew his flight suit with the flag, but that's, that's really hard. Yeah. Because you're essentially ID-ing your family members. Yeah. PAUSE

Flight nurse James Taylor was still fighting for his life. Jenn sat watching the doctors go to work on him. 

Her colleagues in the emergency department were worried about Jenn. They kept trying to get her to eat. They were concerned about her pregnancy.

JENN KILLEEN: They kept trying to get me to do things, to move me away from that, my little perch. Uh, Jenn, can you go find this? Can you go find that I helped set that emergency department up? I knew it very well. I'd been a charge nurse. I'd worked there many years, so I knew nooks and crannies, and I knew where everything was at that. I will tell you on that day. I couldn't remember…

The three people in the Guardian helicopter were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. They were consumed in a fire when an oxygen tank exploded aboard the aircraft. That the loud boom we all heard. PAUSE

Over the next few days Jenn surrounded herself with her people from the flight service. They took turns visiting James at the hospital. Another flight crew flew his family in from Salt Lake City. 

JENN KILLEEN: We were just camping out because we all felt like we just needed to be together...It made us remember and we would tell stories, you know, medical people, we all get together. You put us in a room and immediately within 10 seconds, we're all telling stories…

After five days James Taylor’s injuries were too great and his body gave up.

JENN KILLEEN: And he died on July 4th and I feel in my heart he did that on purpose because of his military background and his faith and patriotism that July 4th was his day. Dany you, James, but he lived until July 4th.

The days that followed were a blur of memorials, debriefs, and questions. One question that kept repeating like a car alarm in her head...

JENN KILLEEN: How the hell did this happen?

Everyone wanted to know the answer. People who worked for Guardian -- the other helicopter -- wanted to know why their crew hadn’t been transferred to the hospital, why they had been left at the scene. 

There were accusations from both companies, the public, the media...

JENN KILLEEN:  You killed our friends, you killed our teammates. Your aircraft crashed into ours. If you hadn't done that, they wouldn't have died. There was a lot of accusation and rightfully so, that's human nature. That's part of anger and part of a grieving process. But it was, it was pretty in your face ...  It just volcanoed. It just piled on top it added to the stress or it added to the grief. It made it more hurtful when you imagine this couldn't get any worse except it could.

Assumptions were made about the pilots. Why hadn’t they heard the update that they were arriving at the hospital at the same time? One patient had a minor injury. Why were they even flying? 

At first Jenn was defensive. Then she realized they’re grieving too.

JENN KILLEEN: My message to the, to my team was very, so no blame, no blame. This is an accident and we can't point fingers and blame, MORALES: Yeah, because there's a lot of people that want to point a finger. JENN: Oh, it was...This was a global event and it was a global event that rocked our industry, communities, aviation, generally vacation. It was beyond my comprehension at the time of how this impacted everybody. 

With reporters from all over the world and the federal investigators and the public all looking for answers Jenn tried to keep stress at bay. One place where she found solace was listening to her baby’s heartbeat.

SFX of heartbeat

JENN KILLEEN: To hear that beat, that rhythmic beat, it just it's comfort. That to me was the thing to do when I had stress, I would grab the Doppler and I would listen and it would calm me.

On August 13 about a month and a half after the crash Jenn had a baby girl and named her Peighton.

JENN KILLEEN: I, um, thought about not going back to work ever again, just raising kids. And after about a month of that, I came to my senses and realized that I need some adult conversation and stimulation, and that was out the door, uh, goodbye out the window. Um, in fact, I then secured a job in the emergency department. It wasn't my happy place, my happy place is in the air. 

She missed the challenge, the stimulation of solving problems under pressure. But she didn’t want to go back to Classic because of a disagreement with the administration about her pregnancy and when she should return to work.

JENN KILLEEN: I was at home one day and I got a phone call that said, ‘Hey, I want you to come work here. And this job is open. So will you come interview?’ 

The thing is, this job opening? It was for chief flight nurse at Guardian Air...the other helicopter company. This was only five months after the crash. The people at Guardian were still hurting.

JENN KILLEEN: The first time I walked into Guardian Air, the tension in the room could be cut with a knife. It was hard and I know it was hard for them... It definitely had become an us versus them. And I was not part of their team yet. LAUREL: Did anybody say anything? JENN: Oh not to my face, but definitely I know that they had a narrative and I can understand and perceive their narrative and I am okay with it because they were hurt. They were in their grieving process and that's part of their anger. And so I absolutely forgive and understand. They had to learn me and that’s ok...There's always two sides to a story. And there's always two, at least two, perspectives and somewhere in the middle is probably the right one. So I knew that if we could get to somewhere in the middle, it would be okay. And maybe I was there to help them with that. 

Jenn still carried some guilt. 

JENN KILLEEN: I had guilt that I wished that I was thankful that my best friends weren't on that aircraft. And that was a hard thing to process for a while. Cause I didn't wish anybody on that aircraft, but the admission of, oh, thank God it wasn't my best friend, Heather or my best friend, Danny,

She felt bad about leaving her work family at Classic.

JENN KILLEEN: I am a fiercely loyal person and of course, when I went to guardian air, I felt maybe some shame of I'm leaving you guys. I told them that I had to leave. LAUREL: Were they understanding? JENN: They were understanding eventually.

Jenn’s come to understand there are always two sides to every story.

JENN KILLEEN: Not just jumping to conclusions, um, both personally and professionally, it helps me to understand or to take a moment and realize that what I'm hearing, but let's investigate or let's get the other side to it. It’s easy to get angry they shouldn’t have taken that flight. What were they doing? It’s also taught me a lot about get the details and understand what happened before you make accusations or hurt people. Did this have to happen to make our industry better? I think the whole year had to unfortunately had to happen for us to wake up and get it.

2008 was the deadliest year on record for their industry. After the Flagstaff crash there had been six emergency helicopter accidents within a two month period. 

The medical flight industry has made changes to their protocols and training to make it safer. 

Flight medic Danny Cox says they installed what’s called a Terrain Collision Avoidance System on every aircraft that alerts the pilot to any obstacles. And crews implemented their own safety protocols. 

DANNY COX: We literally on every trip our pilot, when it's time to take off or land, we tell our pilots that, um, we're all secure and our eyes are out. And that’s our way of telling each other and telling the pilot and checking ourselves ok get your heads out of the aircraft.

JENN KILLEEN: I wholeheartedly believe that as awful as that was, we had to go through it to be better. So does that make my life better or does it make our industry better? Does it make it different maybe, but I wouldn't be where I'm at. If I hadn't gone through it, meaning anything from on a personal level of understanding myself to a professional level of being able to make industry change or promote safety in the industry. 

And she’s learned not to bury her grief or her pain.

JENN KILLEEN: I'm very human and I've learned that if I don't grieve, I bury it and I tell everybody everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's totally fine. 

Every year on June 29 Jenn goes back to McMillan Mesa to the site of the crash.

JENN KILLEEN: In 2008, there was a pin, a Classic pin that was stuck to a tree, right where the crash site was and that we go visit that pin every year. So it's still there. And, um, we've met the Classic teams. We'll, we'll meet at the tree with the pin. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.