Air Evac pilot Mike Shane recently retired after 33 years in the cockpit. He has 7,000 hours of flying time.
Shane has worked as an EMS pilot in the Poplar Bluff area for two decades.
“Everyone tells me I flew over their house,” Shane said. “I’m sure that’s true in this small town.”
In 2002, Shane helped open the first EMS helicopter base in Poplar Bluff. Some 20 years later, he is the last man standing, the last original crew member of Air Evac 24. The other original crew members still living in the area are Dan Whitten, Cheri Morgan and Bob Knight.
Born in 1955, in Parsons, Kansas, and raised in Huntington Beach, California, Shane joined the Army in 1974. Six years later, Sgt. Shane was a paratrooper serving in the 2nd Ranger Battalion.
One night while riding in the back of a helicopter he looked into the cockpit.
“The pilots were just sitting there doing nothing. How hard could that be? I could do that,” Shane recalls.
So, he went to flight school and found out how hard it really was.
Shane graduated as a warrant officer and flew Scout and Attack helicopters. He flew Cobras on the Korean DMZ, Apaches on the Mexican border, a blimp during the LA Olympics, Special Operations in Little Birds, and even Santa in his scout helicopter. His call signs were Assassin 13, Comanche 59, Widowmaker 33 and Paladin 24.
Shane retired after 20 years in the Army and went to work as an EMS pilot.
He described his new job in this way, “As a scout and gun pilot I had to be aggressive, I darted from tree to tree, shooting and hiding.
“Now I was an ambulance driver. I had to provide a stable platform for the nurse and medic to perform their miracles in the back of the aircraft.
“I brought the angels down from the sky to you in your darkest hour. I made sure that the worse day of your life wasn’t the last day of your life. We couldn’t save them all. Some days it just broke your heart. It was hard coming back to work the next day, But most times we had a happy ending. We saved a life.”
Shane said he had many other stories but couldn’t share them due to patient confidentiality.
“I got credit for a felony arrest once. I overflew a police chase. When the criminal saw me, he surrendered thinking I was the police. He said he knew he couldn’t get away now,” Shane said.
Shane has flown over 2,500 patients and logged 4,500 EMS flight hours.
When he wasn’t flying, Shane participated in the National Guard funeral detail, drove for the Disabled American Veterans and managed the Kanell Hall Veterans Museum.
His latest endeavor is writing the weekly column “Tall Tales” for the Daily American Republic, and author of the book “Tall Tales, Stories from the Poplar Bluff Museum.” Shane said he will continue living in Poplar Bluff after retirement and riding his motorcycles.