Manitoba’s STARS air ambulance has become a familiar lifeline in the province.
But it was just a part-time experiment back in 2009 when it saved a boy who’d been swept into a flooded culvert.
That rescue helped keep STARS here permanently.
Now 12-year-old Samuel Gross knows he’s lucky to be alive.
“Someone tells me I went down there and slipped on ice,” said Samuel, “I fell in.”
It was April 2009. Samuel was only 8 years old. He was playing near a flooded creek on the Westroc Hutterite Colony, west of Portage La Prairie, when he fell and got swept into a culvert.
Julie Gross’ brother came running to her for help.
“He tells me, Samuel is stuck in the culvert, stuck in the middle, we can’t get him out and I think he’s going to die, that’s what he told me,” said Julie.
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Only 16 years old at the time, Gross rushed over, pulled Samuel from the ice cold water and gave him CPR, some she learned at school.
“I didn’t focus on anything except him,” said Julie. “When I looked up the whole colony was standing right there, I didn’t realize anything, just him and me. His mom was standing right there watching everything and till this day I’ll never forget the look on her face, her son, her son, he looked pretty much dead to me, blue, cold down to the last pulse.”
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The province had brought the STARS helicopter in temporary during the flood that year, and just three days after arriving, they were called to rescue Samuel.
“Samuel’s call is why we do what we do,” said Pilot Jon Gogan, “there was a missing link that day, up until that day.”
Gogan says it’s a mission he’ll never forget.
“I’m not a doctor but that is one of those calls in my career that I unequivalently saved a life that day,” said Gogan.
Samuel woke up from a coma 13 days later, and wrote a letter to the STARS crew, thanking them for saving him.
“You played a big part in getting me back home alive and well,” Samuel reads from the letter.
STARS has since become a permanent fixture in the emergency network in Manitoba and they say it’s all because of Samuel.
“I think the Samuel Gross call is the call that changed it all for Manitoba,” said Gogan.
“It did really open the discussion of why we don’t have that sort of service available regularly,” said Samuel’s teacher, Sheryl Livingston, “I believe if that helicopter had not been available to get Samuel to the hospital on time that he might not have made it because a two hour trip turned into a 20 minute trip.”
Samuel has a sticker of a helicopter on his desk, but one day hopes to see the real thing and meet the crew.
“It’s nice that they came to save me or rescue me,” said Samuel.
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