Maj Kathryn Reese-Hudock

Married to Brian Hudock. She volunteered during local animal shelter’s fundraiser. Hometown is Riverside, Calif.

Maj. Kathryn Reese-Hudock has been the only hope for wounded troops looking squarely into the face of death.

She has served on eight missions with a team that moves troops with severe lung injuries from Afghanistan to Germany. All of her patients, who would have died if they hadn’t been evacuated, survived the trip.

“We constantly have well-known trauma surgeons who come and work at Landstuhl to see what we’re doing as well as to provide their expertise, and several of them have said that some of these patients they would not take down for [a] CT scan of the head or the body, and yet we manage to put them on a plane and [take] care of them,” she said. During the long flights back to Germany, the patients require constant attention.

“These soldiers, airmen, Marines, they are a part of our family, and so when you get down there, all you want to do is take the necessary steps in treatment to keep them alive and get them back to Landstuhl alive and then eventually get them back to [the U.S.] to see their families,” she said. “That’s what we keep our minds focused on.” Reese-Hudock is deployed to Ramstein Air Base, from where she flies every week to the U.S. with critically ill patients, said Col. Barbara Jefts, chief of nursing administration at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

“I’d trust her to take care of me, and there’s not much higher praise than that,” Jefts said.