Picture is Lori Weston with guest speaker Melissa Arndt and Ryan Bushey

Guest speaker at 10/22/2012 Rotary meeting was Melissa Arndt from Life Flight. Melissa has been the Marketing and Educational Outreach Manager for LifeFlight for five years. In this position, Melissa directs all public relations and communications efforts, develops and designs the organization’s publications and coordinates the clinical and aviation safety outreach. Before LifeFlight, Melissa worked as a graphic designer at Northeast Publishing, and as the Marketing Coordinator for TAMC. She also served as the Cultural Programming Chair on the organizing committee for the

2006 Biathlon Junior World Championships. Originally from Presque Isle, she and her family left the area in 2006 to work in Wisconsin, but they quickly realized the error of their ways. In 2007, Melissa was offered the position with LifeFlight and the family happily returned to the great state of Maine, albeit a little further south than their hometown. When she’s not meeting with patients and writing stories, Melissa and her family are usually on a river or in the woods.

In 2011 Life Flight served 136 Maine towns with a total of 1,451 transports. Services that Life Flight offer are: Critical Care Transport, Human Patient Simulator, Aviation Infrastructure, Landing Zone Development, and Clinical Education. Life Flight services are only used at the request of emergency medical services providers or physicians. 92% of services are used in area with populations less than 10,000. Last year Houlton used 36 air flights and 4 ground. Life flight makes a transport every 6 hours. For more information on this wonderful organization please visit their website at www.lifeflightmaine.org