JUNE 2017 10 | FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM Photo credit: Thurlkill Studios

JUNE 2017 FRONTDOORSMEDIA .COM | 11 It’s six in the morning on a recent Monday and Scott Smith is carrying a box of blood platelets to his plane outside his hangar at Falcon Field in northeast Mesa. Smith, the former Mesa mayor and gubernatorial candidate, slides the hangar’s giant door open, revealing a four-seat Cirrus SR22, a 26-foot airplane he flies for leisure and also in his role as a volunteer pilot for Flights for Life. He pulls the plane out of the hangar and prepares for a 37-minute flight to Flagstaff, where the platelets box will be picked up by a United Blood Services driver and transported to Flagstaff Medical Center, the only trauma center north of the Valley. The blood it receives from Flights for Life saves lives. It was a United Blood Services driver, Veronica Wallace, who had dropped off the box that Smith would take to Flagstaff. She would do the same for another pilot that morning, this one bound for Show Low. Smith and 125 or so volunteer pilots who rent or own aircraft make similar trips every weekday. Many are retired Air Force and commercial airline pilots who just love to fly. They are all committed to the cause —ferrying blood by air with unmatched views of desert expanse all around them. Through Flights for Life, they help the critical blood flow continue in Arizona. Pilots in the Phoenix area formed the group in 1984 to help United Blood Services, the state’s top blood supplier, in addressing health care problems plaguing the Southwest for years: getting blood to small or remote medical facilities and helping avoid blood shortages. In {by mike saucier} COVER STORY How Volunteers Fly to Keep Blood Flowing