Miracle Flights gives wings to miracles for kids
When it comes to her vision for saving children’s lives, Las Vegas resident Ann McGee has always had her head in the clouds. Twenty-four years ago, the Las Vegas resident founded Miracle Flights for Kids, a program that provides America’s children with free flights to hospitals and treatment centers they otherwise could not visit because of financial hardship. For many, it has proven to be the ticket to proper diagnosis and care.
To date, Miracle flights has provided more than 61,000 flights covering some 31 million miles. It began back in 1985 –from McGee’s apartment – when private pilots she knew were attempting to organize their efforts to fly blood to remote sites around Nevada that had no facilities for storing it.
“I felt that I could organize this community service for the pilots,” explains McGee, who has a Master’s degree in early childhood development and has always had a love for kids. “Charity work involves being compliant with a lot of government issues and regulations. Pilots love to fly but not to organize, so I took it over.”
“Things progressed and then one day I got a call from a local man who had a child with a very rare form of cancer and had taken a turn for the worse,” she continues. “Though he knew we only flew blood, he asked for our help to get his son to an out-of-state hospital. Wanting to do everything we could to save the child’s life, we flew them to where they needed go. That was the beginning of what Miracle Flights is today.”
Word-of-mouth spread and through her dedication and hard work, McGee grew the program from only a handful of flights for local kids to an organization that flies boys and girls and their parents from all areas of the country. While she initially built a network of private pilots, corporations with private planes, and commercial airlines to meet the growing demand, McGee discovered that the lighter planes couldn’t go the distance and a lot of the moms were afraid to fly in them. As a result, Miracle Flights today has evolved into raising money to buy commercial tickets for these families.
The only flight organization in the country to have taken that next step, McGee knows that the children will get to where they’re going safely and on time. Because of the economy and donations being down for all charities, Miracle Flights is focusing now on trying to get people to donate their frequent flyer miles to help these children. Airlines such as Delta, Southwest, Jet Blue, Continental, and Midwest will allow frequent flyer miles to be transferred for charity.
“Hopefully, the public will hear our plea and give us their miles to save a child’s life,” McGee says.
- by Bobbie Katz, Las Vegas Reporter for HelloMetro
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