An autumn storm approached as Sean Rickards and his workmate hurried to backfill a countryside dugout with a backhoe and semi-truck.

Then, a miscue wedged him between the two massive machines.

“I had no time to move,” said Sean, a father of three. “I was broken within a millimeter of my life.”

Emergency responders whisked him to a nearby emergency room, and STARS was notified.

“I was told by the doctors that his right side was completely crushed,” said Mindy Rickards, Sean’s wife.

He needed trauma care in the city, almost four hours away by road.

STARS pilots Darryl Dash and David Harding saw a safe window in unsettled weather that allowed them to accept the mission — about 280 km through the air, against a headwind.

“This mission was going to be tough both on the aviation side and the medical side,” said Dash.

After almost two hours, including a fuel stop, they finally arrived.

Sean went into cardiac arrest as the helicopter descended, but the local team resuscitated him and, together with the STARS crew, stabilized him for the 70-minute tailwind return flight.

“The trip back was busy,” said STARS flight nurse Jennifer Fosty. “We were constantly trying to manage both his blood pressure and his oxygen levels with our ventilator, along with blood and many other medications to help keep his blood pressure up.”

Poor weather was still a threat, too. They had just enough room to safely fly below icy conditions above, so a ground ambulance was readied in case they had to land early.

“I impolitely said that this patient would not survive if we had to stop,” said STARS flight paramedic Troy Pauls.

But weather cooperated, and the STARS helicopter soon delivered Sean to the skilled specialists he needed. He’d go on to receive two titanium ribs and a chest plate, and five vertebrae were fused together.

Three weeks on, he surprised everyone by taking his first steps and would leave the hospital a few days after that.

Several months later, Sean and his family met the entire STARS crew from his mission.

“It means so much,” he told them. “You guys have given my family back. You don’t realize how fragile life is until you have a scare like this. You brought me back from everything being gone.”