Traumahawk Medic Ends 40 Years of Responding to Emergencies

He's flown newborn babies across the state for heart transplants and worked on children burned foot to forehead except where their diaper covered.

He's had patients who were talking one minute and dead the next; and patients he thought would never make it through the flight make a complete turnaround after months of therapy.

But Friday — his last day on the job — was quiet.

"If I've learned anything over these last 40 years of EMT field is that every life is definitely precious," he said. "Every day you live and are able to live the way you want is precious."

When Gordon, 60, looks back on how it got started, he thinks of a fire. Not one he put out, but the one he and his older brother started with "some candles and turpentine" in their kitchen in then Dade County. Luckily, their next-door neighbor who was a firefighter for the city of Miami, walked over with "his own garden hose and nozzle" and put it out.

"But I think it was one of those events that affected me in a positive way," he said.

At 17, he started his career in public service volunteering for the city of Miramar in Broward County inside a makeshift ambulance, or as he put it, "a van with lights, sirens, a stretcher and that's it." He was one of the first 500 to take an exam at the University of Miami to make him a licensed EMT in the state.

Gordon eventually moved to Georgia before returning to Florida to join Palm Beach County Fire Rescue in 1981. Nine years later the county decided faster transportation and better care was needed to increase patients' survival rates. The county had no trauma hospitals with neurosurgeons and other specialists ready 24 hours a day, and officials thought a helicopter was a good first step in getting patients the help they needed.

So began the Traumahawk program and Gordon was on board as part of the first crew.

The multi-million dollar machines can get a trauma patient from Belle Glade to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach in less than 20 minutes — a trip that would take an ambulance more than an hour.

"Time is our worst enemy," Gordon said. "It makes the difference in whether you survive the physical trauma."

On board the helicopter, medics have the equipment they need such as EKG machines and IVs to provide emergency care until patients reach the hospital. There are two swivel stretchers in the middle of the helicopter — a space no larger than a minivan. Gordon said while many people think the Traumahawks just transport injured patients, they're in fact one step in the continuum of care. Like the ambulances on the ground, they're portable emergency rooms.

However, there are limitations to how much assistance Traumahawk medics can give. He said sometimes after a patient had been picked up the crew would look at each other and say, "this one needs bright lights and cold steel," or, in other words, the operating room.

David Harrow, Gordon's partner for the past year and a nurse on the Traumahawk, said he's been dreading this day.

"I've called him my blankie," he joked about his partner. "He's my calm."

Neither can remember the first flight they took together or even the last. "They're all a blur," Gordon said, Harrow remembers a couple bad calls where he was anxious and all he had to do was look up and see how calm Gordon was to calm himself down.

"He's been a father figure, a mentor and a friend," he said. "It's going to be hard (to see him go.)"

Gordon knew retirement was inevitable, it just came earlier than expected.

He had survived a motorcycle crash when he was younger — leaving a piece of his sunglasses in his face for nearly three decades — and prostate cancer 10 years ago, among other aliments.

But in August when he went in for his physical, as doctors checked him out, Gordon went into atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart beat. The condition can lead to strokes and other health problem. After wearing a monitor for two weeks and being completely clear, he went into atrial fib again when he returned the monitor. It was time to call it quits.

Gordon has three children — a daughter from his first marriage and two sons from his second. Both sons followed in their father's footsteps in public service. Greg, is a West Palm Fire Rescue captain and Shawn, a former Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy, works with the federal government.

When other crew ask him if he'll get bored at the top of his mountain in North Carolina where his retirement house rests, he said he'll enjoy the break fishing, hunting and time with his wife of 35 years, Regina. But he knows from experience, nothing last forever.

"To think you're looking at a long, safe life, you've got the odds going against you."

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