Forced to Imagine the Unimaginable: Angel One Flight Nurse Turns Grief into Purpose

Jerron Lee Stone, 7, gave his mother, Debbie Izor, one of his signature bear hugs before she left for Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) in Little Rock. This day — July 2, 1996 — was special. She was applying for her dream career as a critical care flight nurse on the Angel One Transport Team.  

“Good luck, Mommy, I hope you get the job. I love you,” Jerron told her.   

They were the last words she heard from her youngest child.   

Izor did get the job, and for the past 27 years, it’s been her mission to provide critical care to children who need it. Jerron died in a three-wheeler accident the day she applied.   

Years later, Izor would lose another of her four children, Jordan Jeffrey Stone, at just 28 years old.  

Each loss created an incomprehensible, deep hole in her life, while simultaneously giving her an intimate understanding of the fear, hope and sometimes devastation her patient family's experience.  

“During these separate events, I certainly dealt with a lot of depression; all the grief cycles that you go through. But I finally just said, ‘Are you going to die or find a purpose to live? What are you going to do?’” Izor said. “‘Are you going to make a difference?’ And so here I am, 20-something years later, flying Arkansas’ skies, making a positive difference in the lives of my patients and their families.”  

 

‘Make a Difference’  

Izor lights up when she talks about her lifesaving work with the Angel One team. Angel One began operations at Arkansas Children’s in 1978 and has seven vehicles, including five ground ambulances and two Sikorsky S-76D helicopters. The fleet can reach anyone in the state within 55 minutes, and transports more than 90% of Arkansas’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) babies. While other hospitals have transport teams, they are typically contracted, not in-house like Angel One.  

On each flight, three team members are present — the pilot, critical care nurse and respiratory therapist.   

“I basically carry an ICU (intensive care unit) on my back that’s strictly pediatric and neonatal. So, you can go to a very, very, very small town where a newborn was born prematurely, and it’s not that they aren’t capable, they just don’t have the pediatric experience and the equipment,” Izor said.   

When she first started flying in 1998, there was a lot of on-the-job training. Today, continuing education is vital. The team has quarterly learning through the PULSE Center (Pediatric Learning and Understanding through Simulation Education) and requires EMT and neonatal pediatric transport certifications.   

“We are always busy, always checking equipment and maintaining multiple certifications. At the beginning of every shift, we meet with our team, consisting of nurses, respiratory therapists, dispatch specialists, pilots and EMTs. We review what happened the previous shift, any upcoming scheduled transports, what equipment is broken or down for scheduled maintenance, what needs to be restocked and upcoming education and events,” Izor said.    

Since she began tracking her flights in 2009, she’s flown well over 1,500 patient transports. In keeping with Arkansas Children’s mission, her focus is on her patient’s needs, but also on the needs of a family during emotional and stressful situations. 

“If a parent is improperly dressed for the elements, like no shoes, because they just ran out of the house, I don’t want to bring them on a flight with a very slim possibility of landing in a field if we were to have an urgent or precautionary landing. You have to know what you can and can’t deal with,” Izor said. “Some parents, rightfully so, are absolutely hysterical. I have to say, ‘If you can calm down, you can go with me, but I cannot take you like this, because you are not my primary focus. Your child is my focus. Get a drink of water, take a deep breath, make a phone call if you need to. I’m going to take care of your baby. Once we get them stabilized and ready to go, if you’re composed and able, you’re welcome to go.’ That usually works.”   

Izor’s calm and compassionate nature comes from experience. While she understands that everyone’s loss is different, she carries memories of her sons with her on every flight.   

“On all of my flights, front and center in my mind is that this is what God has given me to make a difference for other people,” Izor said. “And so that’s my focus. I hope my presence gives some peace and comfort.”  

 

‘Little Did I Know’  

Children are resilient, Izor said. It’s one reason why she wanted a career in pediatrics. Despite juggling family and work in Hot Springs with her husband and four children — Justin, Amber, Jordan and their surprise child, Jerron — she attended nursing school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She graduated with a 4.0 G.P.A., earning Nursing Student of the Year.    

Izor started as an Arkansas Children’s NICU nurse in 1994.  

“I’ve been the parent of the patient, and I’ve been a staff member as well. I have lived in both roles,” Izor said. “It was the reputation of Arkansas Children’s. It kind of sparked me into, ‘I want to know, I want to learn. I want to work at that hospital.’”  

She spent many years balancing family life and her career. All four of her athletic, outdoorsy children were close, but Jordan and Jerron were “joined at the hip,” being just 18 months apart.   

Jordan was passionate about baseball and football, and he was always making people laugh.  

“There was never a family gathering that he didn’t tell a story. It could be the same story he’d told five times, but there were always tears in our eyes from laughing. He was hilarious,” Izor said.  

By contrast, Jerron clung to his mother. He was stellar as a shortstop in Little League, making the All-Star team, but he never got to compete with his teammates that year.  

“He had to be in the lap of mine or my daughter, Amber, always playing with or touching our hair,” Izor said. “He was like a little Golden Retriever puppy. He just wanted to be right there, right beside you; didn’t want to miss a thing, and he didn’t want to be alone.”    

As a young nurse, Izor remembers sitting at the picnic tables outside the ACH Emergency Room, watching ambulances arrive with children too critical to survive.   

“I remember thinking, ‘That’s got to be so devastating. I cannot imagine. How do you survive that?’” she said. “Little did I know I would be that person.”  

 

‘Hurt to Breathe’  

“I didn’t want to leave him,” Izor said, explaining that leaving Jerron with his brothers, Justin and Jordan, the day she applied for Angel One wasn’t the plan. She was going to take him to work with her while she applied for the job, but he wanted to stay with them.   

What followed, Izor said, “wasn’t really anyone’s fault. It was just kids being kids and not knowing the level of devastation that could happen. The boys were doing something I did not know about and never would have approved of.”  

Justin was riding a dirt bike that he had repaired and was taking to a neighbor down a dirt road, as Jordon drove alongside him on a three-wheeler, with Jerron on the back. They were not wearing helmets, and a momentary distraction sent Jordan driving into a ditch, flipping the three-wheeler. Jerron suffered a traumatic injury, leaving Jordan to cradle his dying brother.   
Izor rushed to a hospital in Hot Springs, but Jerron was gone.   

“I just remember being numb. It hurt to breathe,” she said.   

For the next year, Izor went through the motions. The loss overshadowed her ability to do more than the everyday tasks to move her family’s lives forward.   

“Jordan was younger. He was 8 when he held his brother as he took his last breath. He lost his closest family member, and he needed a mom. When he needed me the most, he lost me. All this during some real formative years,” Izor said.   

While Jordan was still the life of the party, the weight of losing his brother never eased. He fell in with the wrong crowd and eventually entered rehabilitation for drug use.  

It was “a drug-induced roller coaster,” she explained. 

Jordan recovered, married and had a son named Jerron Jakob after his late brother. On Aug. 15, 2016, Jordan was found deceased.  

Today, Izor and her husband, Rick, of 21 years, are raising her grandson, Jerron, now 13.   

“I see both of my boys in him a lot. I think it has made that second loss a little more tolerable, because I still have a piece of Jordan,” she said. “I constantly say, ‘Jerron, I hope I’m making your daddy proud.’ He’s such a blessing.”   

 

‘Find the Purpose’  

Izor admits that working with critically ill children after her two losses is never easy, even with the two-year gap between Jerron’s death and starting her job with Angel One. The toughest moments are retrieving sick children from the same hospital and room where she saw Jerron for the last time.   

“I’m not super woman. It’s not that I can just suppress everything and not be affected. But there’s a job that needs to be done, and someone else’s child doesn’t need the same outcome that mine experienced. We need to do better for them. If God’s willing and that’s his plan, then we’re going to go in here, roll up our sleeves and help this child as best we can,” she said.   

When a patient she helped transport has passed, she offers to accompany the doctor to tell the family and answer any questions. It’s not because there are any magic words or insight she can provide. But she can look them in the eye from the perspective of someone who has been there.   

“I don’t think I could sustain what I’ve been through, personally, much less this job, if I didn’t have a firm belief that children go to heaven,” Izor said. “It gives me a lot of solace knowing we’re not in charge. I pray over my patients, and with families who want to.”   

Grief is a daily journey, a sentiment she’s shared with other parents who have lost a child.  

“The pain will always be there,” she said. “It seems to me that time doesn’t necessarily heal, but in time, a person finds coping mechanisms that make the pain more tolerable."  

Finding purpose as a survivor is important. One of hers is Angel One.   

"There's a quote I love that partially states, ‘To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. That is to have succeeded,’” Izor said. “You take what you’ve been given, you find the silver lining and you find the purpose. You find the need and in giving, it heals you,” she said.   

 

This article was written by the Arkansas Children’s content team.  

Photo: Debbie Izor, an Angel One critical care flight nurse, stands by one of the two Sikorsky S-76D helicopters at Arkansas Children’s.