Gift honors paramedic's calling, sacrifice

The Sunstar ambulance that Erik Hangartner worked in before his death will become a classroom at SPJC.

[Times photos: Andrea Bruce Woodall] Tara Hangartner watches a Bayflite helicopter prepare for a special landing at Monday's event.

By MONIQUE FIELDS

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 24, 2000

When paramedic Erik Hangartner wasn't riding in his Sunstar ambulance helping people survive medical emergencies, he was in the classroom teaching aspiring paramedics at St. Petersburg Junior College.

Tara Hangartner, widow of paramedic Erik Hangartner, hugs Debra White, a former colleague of her husband's at Sunstar ambulance company in Largo on Monday.

On Monday, Sunstar found a way to commemorate his work at both institutions. The company donated the ambulance he worked in for six years to the college where he was an adjunct professor for four years.

Hangartner was one of three people killed in an April 25 Bayflite helicopter crash on Weedon Island. Also killed were flight nurse Alicia Betita-Collins and pilot Mark Wallace.

The donation was "corporate generosity in its finest form," said Chuck Kearns, director of Pinellas County's EMS and Fire Administration and a 1983 graduate of SPJC's paramedic program.

SPJC intends to use the ambulance to teach future paramedics how to treat patients in a mobile emergency room.

The timing for the gift couldn't have been any better: The college's 1981 van ambulance quit running last weekend, said SPJC president Carl Kuttler. So Hangartner's ambulance, a 1991 E-350 diesel-powered vehicle, was a welcomed upgrade for sentimental and educational reasons.

"It's one thing to be in a class that's nice and quiet, but when you're in a moving vehicle, it's quite a different thing," said Nerina Stepanovsky, EMS program director at SPJC,

The ambulance was used for advanced life support and includes the gurney Hangartner and his partner, Debra White, used to take patients to area hospitals. SPJC will stock the ambulance, valued at $15,000, with other supplies needed for training.

Hangartner's family was thankful for the tribute, and some cried tears of joy as they took a look inside the ambulance.

"I know he's looking down and watching, probably grinning," his mother, Jeri Hangartner, said. "We didn't even know he was a hero. He was just our son."

Hangartner, 29, was a full-time firefighter and paramedic in Indian Rocks. He was working his second job as a flight medic with Bayflite when the helicopter hit a radio tower and crashed. Just weeks before the crash, he resigned his position as a part-time paramedic at Sunstar.

The ambulance now stands as a reminder of a dad's hard work. When his Ambulance 110 was parked at home, Hangartner's four children would play with his pen lights or open the drawers to see all the medical gadgets.

"When we would spot it driving down the road," his widow, Tara Hangartner, said, "we knew it was Daddy."

The ambulance also was the scene of pranks.

One day Hangartner covered his partner's steering wheel with tape, and she was reminded of the prank each time she touched the sticky wheel.

"I saw a different side of him," White said. "He was a practical joker."

Still, Mrs. Hangartner said, her husband was modest and never would have expected his colleagues to pay tribute to him with such a memorable gesture.

"He gave 100 percent to his career, and it's important that they didn't forget him," she said. "Now his memory will go on forever."

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