Pilots fly NC nursing home residents with dementia to safety as medicine runs low

More than 100 nursing home residents — most with dementia — were hoisted onto helicopters and flown across 80 miles of North Carolina’s damaged interior on Tuesday.

They’d been stuck in Burnsville since Friday, when Helene hit the southeastern United States with a wrath that hasn’t been seen in some areas for more than a century.

Volunteer pilots made about 20 trips in their own helicopters — from two-seaters to Black Hawks — flying northwest from Hickory to rescue 76 residents in Yancey House, Mitchell House and a few others nearby.

The U.S. Army — via a Chinook marked by an image of singer Lionel Richie’s face, with a troop from Davenport, Iowa, inside — made one trip. It was the last trip.

They had 34 seatbelts on board. Luckily, said Capt. Cody Nolan, there were only 34 residents left.

“That’s because I prayed,” said Lindsey Duch, the vice president of health policy and innovation at ALG Senior, a company with about 30 nursing homes from Charlotte to Asheville. “We had our own pilots going out and getting people.”

She worked with Operation Airdrop, a nonprofit that sends volunteer pilots with personal aircraft into disaster zones. The pilots were set to rescue 100 from an orphanage Tuesday, said Matt McSwain, the organization’s Hickory coordinator, but when they heard the kids got replenished food and water, they pivoted.

The seniors would soon run out of resources — namely medicine.

Shana Pitts, another ALG Senior executive, said they’d been waiting for government help since Thursday.

“It was a little frustrating,” she said.

But the furrowed, concerned look disappeared from her face when residents wheeled up to the sliding airport doors in Hickory. One held a Bible in her lap, atop of a flowery, ankle-length skirt.

The nurses welcomed patients with chipper smiles.

“Hey, sweet lady! How’re you?” one asked as a woman in a pink hummingbird shirt with long gray hair rolled up.

“Alright, now go steal some snacks,” another said after checking one diabetic man’s sugar.

Inside the terminal, on a table with a leafy fake plant, sat an opened pack of Lance peanut butter crackers, the kind grandma might have at the bottom of her big purse.

Then McSwain got another call. This one was from the N.C. State Highway Patrol.

“They just gave me a mission,” he said. “Why is the highway patrol calling me? I should be calling them.”

North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd stopped in at the Hickory airport early Tuesday. They offered verbal support, McSwain said, which was more than some parts of the government.