Jon Larason and his partner were called to respond to a backcountry vehicle rollover in Gunnison County. What they encountered was the worst of situations. Two patients were trapped in an OHV as it lost its traction and tumbled 500 feet down a hillside. When the crew arrived, one patient was already dead without hope of resuscitation. The other was actively receiving CPR from distraught friends and family members, all of whom had been there to watch the accident happen. Jon & his partner were only able to land a ½ mile from the scene and had to hike the rest of the way, in the midday summer heat, limited to just the equipment they could carry on their backs. When they arrived at the patient's side, they brought an air of calm and control to the scene. The two of them quickly assessed the patient and then directed their friends to continue CPR in a very fluid and organized fashion, all while providing every intervention and bit of care possible to resuscitate.

As the patient's friends and family were directed through round after round of CPR, Jon took the effort to check in with each one of them, making sure they were holding up emotionally as well as physically. Nothing they did over the next 45 minutes changed the patient's final outcome. However, everything the two of them did made every bit of the difference to the friends and family present: from taking time to explain the interventions being done, to delivering the final news of passing, to encouraging and supporting all those present as they stood, and prayed, and cried there on hillside after pronouncement. The crew was free to leave in the aftermath, however, they chose to stay behind, acting as intermediaries to help the family and friends through the next steps. They took upon themselves the added weight of remaining on scene to meet with the other responders arriving much later. Without question or complaint, they worked through the coroner to remove the bodies from their resting places on the mountainside and helicopter them down to the airport. As they lifted off from the scene, with last parting words for those left behind who knew the victims, it was clear that Jon's caring approach made all the difference as friends and family took their first steps down the road of healing. The healing process begins and moves forward in so many ways, but it can't happen without certain facets of closure or human connection, all of which Jon offered in the course of providing a higher level of medicine. Oftentimes it's not just what we do for the patient but how we do it. It wasn't just what they did but how they brought a higher level of medicine and humanity to those souls on the mountainside that day that made all the difference.