News & Updates

  • 25 Mar 2019 6:52 AM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Markus Dorsey-Hirt
    Chief Flight Nurse
    Care Flight / REMSA
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Markus was born in Augsburg, Germany. He simultaneously attended German medical school and nursing school.

    He moves to the United States in 1998 and worked in the San Diego area hospital in a cardiac ICU. Markus and his family moved to the Reno area in 2001 where he worked in the Trauma ICU at Washoe Medical Center and worked part-time as a flight nurse for a private fixed wing air ambulance.

    Markus joined Care Flight in 2004 as a Flight Nurse.  Since, he has held both clinical and leadership positions within the organization. Currently Markus is the Chief Flight Nurse for Care Flight and the Chief Nursing Officer for the REMSA / Care Flight organization.

    Even in his current administrative capacity, you will often find Markus responding to 911 calls in the Reno area or even covering a shift on our CCT Unit or helicopter bases. The flight and ground crews rely on Markus for his medical expertise and advice, often running patient care situations by him for counsel. Markus is a key member of our organization and contributes tremendously to the successful operations of the Care Flight program.



  • 25 Mar 2019 6:42 AM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Vanessa Coyle
    Care Flight / REMSA
    2019 Star of Life

    Vanessa Coyle has served REMSA / Care Flight for 16 years. She joined REMSA in 2003 as an EMT Intermediate, then attained her Paramedic certification in 2004. In 2009, Vanessa transferred from REMSA ground operations to Care Flight to practice her skills as a Flight Paramedic.

    Vanessa is passionate in her service to mobile healthcare. As a Base Supervisor for the Gardnerville base, she is dedicated to ensure that the community receives nothing but the best in patient care from the flight crews. Vanessa is an excellent mentor to our new staff members, and always acts as a strong patient advocate.

    Vanessa also spends many hours representing Care Flight within the community interacting with police, fire, and EMS agencies throughout the region. Each year at Christmas Vanessa heads up the Care Flight's food donation to the Share Your Christmas Food Drive. Care Flight is proud having Vanessa in our organization and the countless talents she brings with her.


  • 25 Mar 2019 5:30 AM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Kyle Duthie
    EMT
    Community Ambulance
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Kyle Duthie has always had a passion for helping others as well as an interest in EMS. When he joined Community Ambulance as an EMT two years ago, it was the perfect opportunity to put his skills and passion to work. Kyle has been a part of the EMS system since moving from Arizona three years ago and has a strong desire to advance in the profession to the Paramedic level.

    Kyle is well known for being a reliable partner and for remaining calm under pressure. He has a very genuine and caring attitude towards his team and his patients. Kyle enjoys the challenges and problem-solving that each call requires.

    Kyle loves the fact that he is able to provide help and serve the community he lives in, and strives to make a difference in the lives of others. As a mobile healthcare provider, he has served both strangers as well as friends and always makes it a point to be there for both.  He has such a huge respect and appreciation for all those in the EMS community and especially grateful to learn by experience from his Paramedic partners.

    Kyle is proud to be a part of the EMS family and thankful to be in a position to constantly learn and progress in the EMS field. Kyle is deeply motivated to serve as a positive example to help those in need.

    Kyle is especially proud to set a sterling example for his beloved son, Ryatt.


  • 18 Mar 2019 3:30 PM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Sarah Allen
    AirMed
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Sarah Allen was born and raised in Tonopah, Nevada, where she still lives with her family.  Tonopah is a remote wide spot in the road, two hundred miles from the closest major hospital.  Access to healthcare in the town of seven thousand has been in decline, and most notably absent are essential services like EMS or doctors.  Sarah, mother of three girls, left behind working as an ICU nurse in the big city to take on the challenge of serving as a first responder in her community.  As a Flight Nurse, it wasn’t uncommon for her to respond 24/7 from her home, traveling as far as sixty miles to reach accidents and medical emergencies.  There, she stabilized, ground transported to awaiting medevac airplanes, and then accompanied the patients to the hospital.  Typically, there was no back-up. Conditions are remote. Cell phones don’t work and the weather at 6,000 feet of elevation can change rapidly.  While every response is voluntary, she tirelessly cared for people in need, even under adverse conditions. Her presence made differences in each and every response.  

    Sarah’s approach is to treat her patients like members of her own family. In fact, Sarah is often quietly referred to as “Mother Sarah” in her community and by her co-workers.  She knows her previous patients, and future ones too! She hugs when a hug is needed, cries when tears need to be shed, and holds a firm line when it need holding.  When tragedy strikes despite the very best medical efforts, Sarah even attends patient funerals. She taught herself how to leave her life as a mother, travel to an emergency, render care, and then to get the patient to the airplane and onto a hospital… innovation and sacrifice, on the personal level, at its best!

    When there was a terrible head-on crash in a remote desert location,  Sarah’s phone rang asking for her assistance.  Fifteen minutes later, she arrived in her personal car, where she encountered a horrible sight:  There were fatalities, and the living were either strewn about in the snow or helplessly entrapped in the wreckage.  Everyone involved at the scene was either a neighbor or a friend.  Until others arrived to help, Sarah tended to her best friend who had sustained a head injury, her friend’s child who was severely injured and in shock, and her friend’s husband, who was her own husband’s best friend.  She organized numerous medevacs to distant trauma centers. She then climbed into the wreckage of an overturned truck and held the hand of the entrapped man, a friend, as consciousness waned life and left his body.  Holding the hand of your friend as he leaves this world cannot is not an easy thing and most definitely leaves its scars behind. It did for Sarah. Thankfully, with the passage of time, she is healed and once again an amazing EMS provider and proud member of the AirMed family.

    More recently, Sarah and her Paramedic partner performed a medevac mission. Her team arrived at a remote airfield to find a volunteer ambulance crew desperately trying to resuscitate a 10-year-old asthmatic in arrest.  Again, in a place with no consult or helpful resources, Flight Nurse Sarah was instrumental turning a tragedy into a saved life, delivering that boy to the Children’s Hospital 220 miles away. The child gave a thumbs up on arrival.  Sarah’s resilience and caring are a constant inspiration.

    As rural hospitals continue to close and traditional healthcare services shrink, mobile healthcare services become more important.  They are sometimes all that can stand in the gap between life and death.  It’s the “Stars of Life” like Sarah Allen, who continue to work tirelessly with little recognition.  Today, let’s recognize and celebrate Nevada’s band of heroes!


  • 18 Mar 2019 3:25 PM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Chris Clark
    AirMed
    2019 Star of Life

    Christopher Clark was born and raised in Pennsylvania. At an early age, he joined the United States Air Force. During his enlistment, he became a certified Paramedic, serving as an Independent Duty Medic for the Red Horse Squadron at both home station and during deployments.  In 2015, after twenty years of service, Chris retired from active duty and promptly enrolled in the UNLV School of Nursing.  Taking advantage of former Governor Sandoval’s initiatives to encourage small businesses to employ skilled veterans, Clark was hired by Life Guard International, now AirMed Response, as a flight paramedic.  Despite frequently working long hours, he attended nursing school full-time, graduating with honors and attaining his license as a registered nurse in late 2018.

    Chris is not one to shy away from assignments, even when they are most challenging.  Often, on a moment’s notice, he would drop his personal agenda, don his flight suit, and fly desperately ill patients away to receive life-saving care.  When the only hospital between Reno and Las Vegas closed its doors several years ago, Life Guard provided a medevac aircraft to support the meager EMS resources in the remote regions.  Chris volunteered for assignment to that base in Tonopah between 2015 and 2018, often for as long as 10 days at a stretch.  There, he mentored and encouraged volunteers, rendered care, saved lives, and organized medevac flights for those in dire need. Back-up was usually only available from other medevac airplanes and helicopters more than a hundred miles away. 

    Stories of Clark’s conduct are still fresh in the minds of the residents of Nye and Esmeralda County.  In the middle of the night, as the lone provider along with a Deputy Sheriff, Chris Clark resuscitated a victim of cardiac arrest found on a lone stretch of U.S. Highway 95, called a helicopter from another agency, and sending her to a distant medical center, alive!  Another time, he was summoned deep into the desert, where he located, treated, and transported to the airport where he climbed into a medevac airplane, personally delivering accident victim to a trauma center in Las Vegas.  In 2017, following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, Clark was first to volunteer and to be sent as the largest peacetime FEMA medevac deployment in history.  His military deployment experiences were translated into key strategies that supported the logistics of over 350 other deployed paramedic’s, nurses, and pilots staffing sixty medevac aircraft operating in Texas.

    Mobile healthcare is a reality that will continue to evolve and grow as the existing resources in rural Nevada continue to dwindle.  Saving lives can be stressful, frustrating, exhausting, and even unpleasant.  Chris once noted that the challenges of saving lives in rural Nevada could be far more difficult than doing the same in Afghanistan!  Emergency responders like Flight Paramedic Christopher Clark are our “Stars of Life” and deserve to be celebrated.  If you were to ask Chris why he tirelessly sacrifices of himself, he’d tell you that it is simply the right thing to do; an innate value difficult to describe precisely.  He knows and feels it: and AirMed thanks God that he does!


  • 18 Mar 2019 2:59 PM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Jennifer Walters
    REMSA
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Paramedic Jennifer Walters was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. She started her career in EMS in 2012 as an EMT. She graduated as valedictorian of her Paramedic class in 2017. She is also a newly certified EMS Instructor. She married her husband in 2014 and is expecting her first child in July. She has two dogs, Prim and Ru. In her free time, she enjoys remodeling her house, camping, and hunting.

    Jennifer is being honored as a Nevada Star of life because she is an excellent Paramedic, teacher, and mentor. She provides outstanding service to our community and is a very involved member of our organization.


  • 18 Mar 2019 2:38 PM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Daniel Moriarty
    REMSA
    2019 Star of Life

    Paramedic Daniel Moriarty is originally from Roseburg, Oregon. He and his parents moved to Reno in 2010. Soon after, he began to take an EMT class. He married his wife, Marian, in 2017 and has an 8 month old daughter, Madelynn. Daniel enjoys fly fishing in the Reno-Tahoe area, hiking, playing drums and hanging out with family and friends.

    Recently, Daniel was dispatched to care for a Priority 1 unconscious patient. Upon the crew’s arrived, the gentleman was laying in his bed, lethargic, pale, and diaphoretic. He soon began to suffer multiple syncopal episodes. The team was aware of the patient’s history of congestive heart failure, and quickly took his vitals and put him on the cardiac monitor. Daniel and his partner immediately applied the pads and paced his heart successfully throughout transport. When the patient arrived at the hospital, he received a pacemaker, and was eventually discharged with a positive overall outcome. Daniel recalls that, “This was one call where I believe seconds mattered, and we were within seconds of saving this patient’s life.”  

    Daniel is being recognized as a Nevada Star of Life due to his excellent patient care, outstanding teaching skills, and the positive attitude that he brings to this profession.

  • 15 Mar 2019 1:25 PM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Jenna Roxbury
    Flight Nurse
    Mercy Air / Air Methods

    Jenna Roxbury has served as a Registered Nurse (RN) for more than 10 years. She has extensive experience in Pediatrics, ranging from service in the Pediatric Oncology Bone Marrow transplant team in Phoenix, to special event staffing (to include Life is Beautiful, Electric Daisy Carnival and Burning Man), and most recently HEMS. She currently lends her talents to Mercy Air in Pahrump, primarily supporting life-saving transports to Las Vegas from a very busy critical access hospital. Her credentials include Certified Pediatric Nurse (CPN), NRP Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP), and she is Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump (IABP) certified. Jenna is excited to be taking her Certified Flight Registered Nurse (CFRN) exam this month as well to further her credentials.

    Jenna is a true healer in nature and in profession. Her life was changed forever after receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2017, which she will tell you was the best thing to ever happen to her. As an RN working in Oncology, she was now the patient instead of the care provider. Finding herself in a vulnerable, life-threatening state only deepened her empathy and compassion for the patients she continues to serve. Jenna's drive and passion for life is noticed by all who she connects with—from patients, to peers, to community partners. She is so invested in her community that she recently accepted an offer to serve as a per diem RN at Desert View Hospital in Pahrump.

    Jenna is a proud mother of two children and spends her free time as a Professional Cayoneer Guide. She visits Nepal annually to volunteer as a health care provider and to help in local orphanages.

    Mercy Air is proud to recognize Jenna Roxbury as a 2019 Nevada Star of Life.


  • 7 Mar 2019 7:25 AM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Matt Hauth
    REMSA
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Matt Hauth began his EMS career as a field provider before finding his niche in the Comm Center. He has now served REMSA as a Communications Supervisor for more than three years. This field experience has served Matt well, as he is able to bridge the gap between the field and communications to drive excellence in operations and patient care. Most recently, Matt led a focus group to foster collaboration.

  • 7 Mar 2019 7:12 AM | Amanda Riordan (Administrator)

    Kenny Kitts
    REMSA
    2019 Nevada Star of Life

    Kenny has been with REMSA organization for more than 20 years in many different roles, including field Paramedic, Business Office Manager, Communications Manager, and Senior Data Analyst. Kenny has the ability to take real-world EMS perspective and experience and use objective data to drive our high-performance EMS organization.

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Nevada Ambulance Association
PO Box 96503 #72319 | Washington, DC 20090-6503
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