Reservist saves life of Virginia Tech shooting victim

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Amaani Lyle
  • 459th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs Office
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. --  Capt. Heather Menzies remembered the scene at Carilion New River Valley hospital April 16, 2007 as "organized chaos." 

A Reservist flight nurse with the 459th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron and clinical team leader with Carilion Patient Transport Company, Captain Menzies said trauma is inherent in her day-to-day occupation. 

But that day was different. 

Earlier that morning, senior university student Cho Seung-Hui, a loner whose disturbing writings portended a deadly streak, came to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and fatally shot 32 people. He wounded at least 25 others during the rampage. 

Captain Menzies is part of a specialized critical care ground and helicopter transport patient team that supports Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Blacksburg among other regions of Virginia. She, an ambulance driver and another critical care specialist, were in Lynchburg, nearly two hours away from the site of the shootings in Blacksburg, Va., when she heard the initial dispatch message that simply said, "Mass casualty incident at VT." 

The sirens illuminated and the race against time was on. 

"Our instinct and adrenaline kicked in, even though we were going on so little information," Captain Menzies said. "One of the medics with us tried to get more details by checking CNN on his Blackberry web browser, and our ambulance driver's girlfriend kept calling his cell phone with updates." 

Captain Menzies and her crew spent the next two hours barreling down rural roads through torrential 60 mile-per-hour gusts to pick up a critical patient in time. All the while, the dispatch reports of additional victims continued to roll in. 

"The situation was difficult because the winds kept us from using the helicopter to get there," Captain Menzies said. "It was just too hazardous to fly." 

As medics set up a triage center on campus to try to stabilize patients before their transport to medical facilities, the havoc continued at local hospitals, the captain said.
"The medics on campus had to go patient to patient looking for signs of life, knowing there was a finite amount of supplies to treat the victims," she said. 

Injuries among the victims ranged from arm and leg bullet wounds to the far direr. A student who suffered head and face gunshot wounds sustained injuries so severe that hospital officials handpicked Captain Menzies and her team to expedite him to a more advanced facility. 

Amidst the "organized chaos" of one medical setting, Captain Menzies successfully stabilized her patient and transported him to another, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. 

"Something innate kicks in and you just do your job," the captain said. "My job is to do everything I can to keep my patients alive." 

Lt. Col. Margaret Schmidt, 459th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron flight nurse, said the patient's favorable outcome is no surprise to her. 

"I was Captain Menzies's flight instructor on her first operational mission when we brought 77 casualties home from Ramstein (Air Base, Germany) in 2003," Colonel Schmidt said. "She was a first lieutenant who hit the ground running and had an instinctive ability to keep cool under pressure." 

Colonel Schmidt said though she was awe-struck upon learning of Captain Menzies's involvement in VT, she was confident the right person was there for the job.
"To be able to perform in the horror of that incident requires that someone have steel on the inside - Captain Menzies is that someone," the colonel said. 

Captain Menzies said patient care did not stop when the victim arrived to his new location. 

"I checked on him the next day," the captain, a Salem, Va., native said. "In fact, most of the medics checked on everyone else's patients too." 

The captain said she realized the impact of her involvement two weeks after the incident.
"I talked to my patient's father and he just hugged me," she said. "I told him to just let us know if there's anything more we could do for him - it was incredibly touching for me."