Compassion Flights in Hampton hosted their annual fly-in, drive-in breakfast Monday at the Hampton Municipal Airport.
Compassion Flights was started by Doug Pralle, and his wife Robyn, with the goal of providing free air transportation to individuals in the Iowa area that are in need of medical assistance. Proceeds from the breakfast go toward Compassion Flights. Doug Pralle, who spoke with RadioOnTheGo during the fundraiser, says the organization serves several people from around the midwest.
“We give, free of charge, people rides to appointments and any medical treatments. So there’s no charge, this is all free to the people that we take care of and we service the surrounding states. So we’ll go to, you know, we go to Mayo a lot. Obviously we’re lucky to have Mayo close, Omaha, Iowa City. And they don’t just have to be from Hampton. You know, we’ve gone to the western side of Iowa and picked people up and taken them to Iowa City too. So we get a little broader range than just here.”
The breakfast serves as the organization’s only fundraiser each year. Several local aircraft were on display as well as fly-in aircraft, as members from the University of Iowa AirCare Emergency Transport team were on hand to display their EMS helicopter.
“We go to the scene, so we’ll go places, like we’ll get called by EMS or sometimes we get called to the hospitals. So we kind of go anywhere and everywhere. We can go down to Iowa City or Des Moines. We go to Rochester every once in a while. Anywhere the patient needs to go, within reason, we can get there in a helicopter.”
That is Sara, one of the flight nurses for the AirCare team. To donate to Compassion Flights, or for more information on their mission, you can visit compassionflights.com.
Pictured is Doug Pralle from Monday’s fundraiser
