By Jason Sweeney

Kiwanis Club of Los Altos members present handmade dolls to Angel Flight’s Grant Smith. The dolls provide comfort to children in emergency or traumatic situations.

Dorothy, of the town of Quincy in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, found a lump in her breast and went to see her doctor. The diagnosis was bad.

Her doctor informed her that she had a particularly virulent form of breast cancer and that she should get her affairs in order and make peace with her family because she didn’t have much time left to live.

Then Dorothy learned that City of Hope had a special program that treated her type of cancer. But the treatment center was in Los Angeles more than 560 miles away. Dorothy didn’t have the income for frequent plane flights nor the stamina for the long drive to L.A.

A group of pilots from an organization called Angel Flight came to Dorothy’s rescue. Angel Flight pilots flew Dorothy, free of charge, from her home in Quincy to the City of Hope facility in L.A. once a week over the course of a year allowing her to receive the treatment she needed. Today, her cancer is in remission.

Grant Smith, a retired engineer and private pilot from Menlo Park who flies between 20 to 30 Angel Flight missions a year, recounted Dorothy’s story to the Kiwanis Club of Los Altos during the club’s April 12 meeting in downtown Los Altos.

Long drives or expensive plane tickets can be huge obstacles for some cancer patients, Smith said. Angel Flight offers free flights to hospitals where the medical care they need is provided.

Smith, the owner of a Cessna 182, has been flying airplanes as a hobby for about 20 years.

“I was looking for something to do with my airplane,” Smith said. With Angel Flight, Smith found a way to use his hobby and his airplane for a greater good.

“Angel Flight is a totally free service,” Smith said. “Pilots cover 100 percent of the costs of their missions.”

In Northern California, approximately 500 pilots fly for Angel Flight, with 100 of them being fairly active, Smith said. Some of the pilots have regular jobs and fly only on weekends. This means retirees fly the bulk of the missions.

Angel Flight West has four paid employees - three schedulers and the executive director, Jim Weaver. The four employees’ salaries are paid by donations while the rest of the organization consists of unpaid volunteers.

If passengers are mobile enough to fly in a small aircraft, have a doctor’s permission certifying their condition is stable enough to fly in a non-pressurized plane and they can demonstrate they have the financial need, Angel Flight will fly them for free.

Angel Flight has flown more than 4,500 missions west of the Rockies, Smith said. One thousand of those missions were flown in Northern California.

The pilots of Angel Flight are proud of their safety record, Smith said. They have never had an accident. A mission assistant is present on every flight to help passengers and assist the pilot. The planes are mostly four-seaters, although some of the more “financially successful pilots” have airplanes with as many as 10 seats.

“Flying is an expensive hobby, right up there with collecting European artwork,” Smith said.

He said that for about 60-70 percent of passengers a flight with Angel Flight is their first time flying. Many of Angel Flight’s passengers are young mothers with spina bifida. With Eureka on the Northern California coast lacking a VA hospital, Angel Flight often flies World War II vets to VA hospitals in other parts of the state. Angel Flight also flies family members to visit loved ones undergoing extended hospital stays far from home.

“We fly the whole spectrum,” he said, “from babies to people in their 70s and 80s.”

The Kiwanis Club presented Smith 100 trauma dolls made by the club with help from Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Circle K and Key Club members. The dolls are used to help ease a child’s anxiety and to help children express fears and injuries.

As part of Smith’s talk, he showed the club a video hosted by singer, musician, actor and ex-Entertainment Tonight Show host, John Tesh. Standing on a windy airport tarmac in front of a backdrop of propeller planes, Tesh summed up the objective of Angel Flight.

“Caring and helping,” he said. “That is Angel Flight’s mission.”

For more information, log on to www.angelflight.org.