Making Health Care Accessible—By Air

Jun 10, 2021

Eileen Ambrosini moved to the small town of Atwater, California, in 1979. Over the next three decades she met her husband, raised her daughter, and worked as a high school French teacher, all in the heart of the state’s agricultural corridor.

But when Ambrosini was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, the town’s rural location and lack of specialized medical services left her no option but to drive upwards of six hours every Friday to receive treatment and counseling at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto.

Eileen Ambrosini lives in Atwater, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. “It’s 2 1/2 hours from Yosemite. It’s 2 1/2 hours from just about anything of interest,” she says. When Ambrosini was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, the town’s rural location and lack of specialized medical services left her no option but to drive upwards of six hours every week to receive treatment. Photo by Martin do Nascimento/Resolve Magazine.

“I was so exhausted after a while that I literally could not get out of bed on Saturday,” Ambrosini says. “I don’t know how long I could have continued to do that. It was just taking too much from the energy that I didn’t have.”

One day, Ambrosini overheard a fellow patient at the hospital talking about how they got to treatment every week—a nonprofit organization of volunteer pilots called Angel Flight West.

Chris Bennett refuels his plane in Byron, California, after flying Eileen Ambrosini to treatment in Palo Alto and back. “It’s a very centering, grounding experience that allows me to combine a bunch of things that I enjoy all mixed together,” says Bennett. Photo by Martin do Nascimento/Resolve Magazine.

“The fundamental value that Angel Flight [West] offers is the ability to connect people in remote areas with advanced medical treatment,” says Chris Bennett, a volunteer pilot with the organization. For the past four years, Bennett has regularly flown Ambrosini to and from treatment.

The Altamont Pass, connecting California’s San Francisco Bay Area to the San Joaquin Valley, was the most direct route for Ambrosini to travel to treatment in Palo Alto before she began flying with Angel Flight West. Photo by Martin do Nascimento/Resolve Magazine.

Bennett got his pilot’s certificate shortly after retiring from a career in tech and immediately decided to start volunteering to infuse his personal love of flying with the purpose of helping others.

“It’s a very centering, grounding experience that allows me to combine a bunch of things that I enjoy all mixed together,” he says.

“Navigating health care is incredibly difficult even if you’re not ill and you don’t have chemo brain and you’re well-educated,” says Josh Olson, Executive Director of Angel Flight West. “We really just want to take that one piece away and say, ‘Hey, we’ll get you there and back. You don’t need to worry about that. You worry about healing and your family and making the most of your time.’” Photo by Martin do Nascimento/Resolve Magazine.

The American Hospital Association estimates that transportation challenges prevent 3.6 million Americans from receiving medical care each year. Of those cases, the Air Care Alliance estimates that 25,000 public benefit flights, such as those operated by Angel Flight West, take place every year in the United States.

“It’s the best of all possible worlds,” says Ambrosini, “because I live in a very peaceful area, but then I know every Friday […] or whenever it is I need to get back to Palo Alto, it’s the 10 minutes to the Air Force base, and that’s [all of] my driving.”

This story and video were originally produced for and published by Resolve Magazine. They appear here with permission.

Martin do Nascimento is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Oakland, California. He is a trilingual returned Peace Corps Volunteer and journalism has taken him around the world. His work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, Frontline, AJ+, Cosmopolitan, News Photographer magazine, National Public Radio, Seeker, NBC News, Telemundo, Univisión, The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Tribune and elsewhere.