Like most kids, Scott Lauridsen wanted to learn to fly. So he did: In 1997, Lauridsen earned his wings—his pilot’s wings.
Lauridsen lives in Overland Park with his wife and kids. He worked in sales before he retired, but he always knew he wanted to become a pilot. “It’s something I always wanted to do when I was a kid, and (after having) a family and kids, you finally get the means and time to do it,” Lauridsen says.
But he was looking for a deeper purpose. Lauridsen says flying is a hard hobby to rationalize without a driving factor. It’s expensive and time-consuming. The aviation community is tight-knit, though, Lauridsen says. Most everything spreads through word of mouth, which is how he found out about Angel Flight Central.
Angel Flight Central is a nonprofit organization that organizes flights for people in need, typically for health-care purposes. It’s headquartered in Kansas City but provides flights for passengers across the country through sister agencies Angel Flight West, Southeast, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Volunteer pilots fly families, patients and loved ones across the country to doctor’s appointments, clinical trials and specialized care—all for free. Passengers generally come from more rural areas where specialized medical care is not available. Lauridsen started volunteering with them 10 years ago and hasn’t looked back since.
“The pure joy and satisfaction you get from helping these people, that they’re truly in a tough spot in their life and need some help—you get hooked,” he says.
Katy Horst, who works in operations and development at Angel Flight Central, views the organization as a glimmer of hope for families in situations that seem otherwise hopeless.
“If you think about a patient who was maybe just accepted into a clinical trial that has to be there weekly, three states away, there’s not many people who have the means to do that,” Horst says. “And so what might seem impossible becomes possible once they find out about Angel Flight Central.”
Founder and Chairman Emeritus James H. Stevens, Jr., a retired Kansas City business executive with a passion for flying, started the organization 30 years ago after he flew an eight-year-old boy with a heart abnormality from Kansas City to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for free, where he received a life-saving surgery. The experience inspired Stevens to found Angel Flight Central, then called Wings Over Mid-America.
The organization has grown immensely from that first flight back in 1995. They originally set the goal to fly 12 passengers per year. Today, Angel Flight Central averages about 2,500 free flights per year with a team of over 300 volunteer pilots like Lauridsen, all of whom use their own planes. Typically, pilots fly single-engine planes with room for four to six passengers. All planes must carry a Standard Airworthiness Certificate provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.
For families who need to access care that is further away, Angel Flight Central has partnered with Southwest Airlines to provide vouchers.
For Horst, who was a social worker before joining Angel Flight Central two years ago, what sets this organization apart is how easy it is for people in need to get a flight.
“As a social worker, I’ve worked with so many different organizations that make you jump through a whole lot of hoops and paperwork to get the help that someone might need,” she says. “But as far as Angel Flight Central goes, we don’t ask for financial documentation, race, religion, things like that. We just ask that you’re in need of help.”
Families must provide transportation to and from airports, but Angel Flight Central takes care of the rest for passengers while they’re in the air. Pilots often bond and form meaningful relationships with the families and passengers that they fly.
Sometimes, passengers need to fly once a week or multiple times per month, and pilots become regular fixtures in their passengers’ lives. Lauridsen has flown one pair of siblings to and from a special needs camp once a year for eight years in a row—and has taken pictures of them each flight. Lauridsen has been a mainstay in the lives of these siblings from the ages of seven and eight to the ages of 15 and 16.
He describes the relationship between the passenger and the pilot as one of gratitude.
“All of them are just so appreciative,” he says. “It’s just so overwhelming how thankful they are that you’re doing this for them. I try to explain to them that (they are) doing something for me, too.”
For Lauridsen, his volunteer work at Angel Flight gave him the purpose he had been looking for throughout his years of flying. He just received his 75-mission pin from Angel Flight and has no desire to slow down.
“Pilots have a passion for flying,” he says. “And if you can actually do something with a purpose, it just makes your passion that much more meaningful. I like to tell everybody that I found something where I can combine my passion with a purpose. That’s what Angel Flight does for me.”