The Gift of Flight

Twenty years ago, Tom Goodwin, a Sacramento businessman and pilot, started a volunteer program to transport donated organs and other emergency medical cargo to hospitals in northern California.

Today the program, now a charity called AirLifeLine, has grown to include 900 pilots, and the cargo they carry is even more precious: patients who are suffering from life-threatening illnesses, birth defects, or injuries but who cannot afford to pay for transportation to get treatment.

Since its beginning, AirLifeLine has logged more than seven million air miles and flown thousands of patients to medical centers in all 50 states.

The charity, which has an annual operating budget of $404,000, is expanding even more, thanks in part to several grants from Ronald McDonald House Charities, including a five-year, $1-million grant to update its computer system and publicize the availability of the organization’s services.

One of AirLifeLine’s special projects is a joint effort with the organization Children of Chernobyl, Eastern Ohio Charitable Fund, which helps provide medical treatment to youngsters who live in the area of the former Soviet Union that was devastated by an accident at a nuclear-power plant in 1986.

Once the children arrive in the United States for medical care, pilots from AirLifeLine fly them to eastern Ohio, where they are screened for cancer and other ailments and where they receive dental and vision care.