By Sara Ballenger

The roar of a helicopter came to a crescendo as Stanford Hospital’s Life Flight landed on the blacktop at St. Simon Catholic School in Los Altos May 29.

The BK 117 helicopter participated in an emergency vehicle education day along with a Santa Clara County Fire Department fire engine from Loyola Station, an ambulance from Santa Clara County Emergency Services and the DARE police car from the Los Altos Police Department.

“This shows the children all of the resources available to them. It also gets them aware of the vehicles and what they do,” Fire Captain Jeff Schwerdtfeger said. “It’s a good thing for awareness, for the kids to be able to actually talk to us and walk through the engines and not be afraid - and know that we are people too.”

Each class in every grade got an opportunity to spend time looking at and getting into each vehicle and also to ask questions.

Stanford’s only Life Flight helicopter was the star of the show, however, as Life Flight recently helped save the life of St. Simon fourth-grader Holly Bacon. Stanford’s Life Flight’s coverage area goes as far north as Mendocino, as far east as Reno and as far south as San Luis Obispo, covering five counties, flight nurse Veronica Sherwood explained.

Holly had been pitching in a Mountain View Bobbysocks softball game April 13, at Stevenson Field in Mountain View, when she was hit on the side of the head by a 60 mph line drive.

Holly lost consciousness for a few seconds before being carried off the field. She was not wearing a helmet. Bobbysocks has switched to using a softer ball after Holly’s accident, said Mary Bacon, Holly’s mother.

“What is scary is that she looked perfect on the outside,” said Mary, who was at the game. “She had checked out OK by nurses from Stanford who were moms with children on the team. But the last thing she remembered was that the count was 2 to 2, and that’s when I decided to take her to the hospital.”

Mary drove her daughter to Kaiser Santa Clara. After waiting for an hour with an ice pack on her head, Holly was taken in for X-rays. They showed she had four skull fractures and had suffered an epidural hematoma, or bleeding into the brain, Mary said.

Shortly after that discovery, Holly was “life-flighted” to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford for brain surgery. The operation was successful, but Holly, her family and her fellow students at St. Simon realized how lucky she’d been.

Flight nurses Sandy Correia, whose daughter attends school with Holly, and Heather Rankens thought that bringing the helicopter to the school would be good for the healing process.

“It helps a lot when an emergency does occur, so that the children are familiar with what might happen,” Correia said. “We always manage to slip in important safety reminders. We try and do it in a fun way. We teach helmet safety and street safety. We talk to the kids about what kind of patients we fly, how they got hurt and how they could have prevented getting hurt.”

Correia hopes that students will better understand what happened to their classmate.

Holly is hoping to return to the pitching mound as soon as possible, this time wearing a helmet.

“People should wear helmets no matter what sport they play,” she said.

Holly had to shave half of her head and has a scar the size of a horseshoe. This has been a learning experience for her and, she hopes, her schoolmates.

“People shouldn’t make fun of people who are hurt on the outside, because they are probably better on the inside because of it,” she said.