The STARS air ambulance service in Saskatchewan is raising money — and awareness — with the launch of their 2015 STARS Lottery.
Two new homes — one in Saskatoon and the other in Regina — are being offered as grand prizes. Each home is valued at $1.5 million.
Other prizes include 12 vacations, five vehicles and 342 additional prizes.
Media were on hand in Saskatoon May 14 for the official launch of the 2015 STARS Lottery.
Rod Gantefoer, executive director of the STARS foundation, says the lottery represents a “significant funding source for STARS.”
STARS receives $10.5 million from the province, leaving the other $10.5 million to be raised through fundraising. The STARS lottery contributes between $20 and $25 million, Gantefoer said.
As for the prize package itself, Gantefoer says he believes the builders have “hit a home run. This house is gorgeous, the one in Regina is gorgeous. They’re family type homes that anyone would be happy to move into.”
By purchasing a lottery ticket, not only do people have a chance to win the home, but “they’re supporting STARS every step of the way,” said Gantefoer.
The home in Saskatoon, at 109 Greenbryre Cres. N., is adjacent to the Greenbryre Country Club golf course. The building is two storeys, 3,201 square feet and includes four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
Interior designers Shannon Weber and Aimee Loren-Leslie worked hard at an interior look to the house that they wanted to be functional, practical and also attractive and interesting. They added a few unique touches to the interior of the home as subtle reminders to the winner that the home is a STARS Lottery grand prize.
“One of our primary goals was to create a connection to the STARS cause,” said Leslie. “So as you tour through this home you will see many references to the prairies, to the prairie sky that STARS flies, to rural Saskatchewan. Downstairs you’ll see the letter “S” hanging on the wall of the bar to remind the lucky winner of where the home has come from.”
Also downstairs is a hand-carved helicopter.
STARS is particularly vital to rural or remote areas of the province that are not close to the hospitals in the two largest centres. Among the heaviest users of the STARS service during its years of operation has been the Northwest.
North Battleford is one of the top destinations. There were 23 missions there in 2014-15 and 74 since the service was established in 2012.
Since 2012 there have been five missions to Maidstone, 12 to Unity, six to Wilkie, five to Cut Knife, two to Edam, two to Meota, six to Maymont, four to Delmas, two to Red Pheasant Cree Matopm, one to Mosquito First Nation and 13 to Little Pine First Nation.
Flight paramedic Eric Jelinski says he has been to the Battlefords and area often as part of the STARS team.
According to Jelinski a STARS ambulance will carry four personnel — two pilots, a nurse and a paramedic. “The pilots are busy doing their flying and we’re busy in the back, trying to stabilize the patient and do as best as we can to get them to the hospital.”
“Every day is a little bit different, you can never predict what you’re going to do,” he said. The teams work on shifts, either days or nights.
The STARS helicopter is able to land at airports, on roads, in open fields or the roofs of various hospitals.
“When we do a scene call, we try and land as close as we can to the scene or to where the patient is,” said Jelinski.
Usually they look for a hard or flat surface and it is ground emergency crews who set up a safe place for the STARS helicopter to land.
Jelinski says the cases they respond to tend to be a mix of “medical” and “trauma.” The medical situations would include strokes and heart attacks, while trauma would involve responding to car accidents, falls from heights and other injuries that need urgent attention.
One of the STARS patients who was in attendance at the lottery launch was Bonnie Fortin of Elrose.
The mother of four required the STARS ambulance in 2013 when she suffered complications from a routine C-section surgery in hospital in Swift Current.
Things went wrong during that procedure, and Fortin was transported to a specialist in Regina and immediately was put into surgery. She told reporters that without STARS she could not have survived.
“I was bleeding to death and they saved my life,” she said.
“I would never have survived a two and a half hour ambulance trip; my trip took 40 minutes, and in that 40 minutes they managed to get me totally stable.”
Ironically, Fortin has no recollection of the trip in the helicopter, as she was unconscious.
It was afterwards when she met the crew that she found out what had transpired.
“The people at STARS really helped me heal, they took me for a tour. My crew was amazing. I met them, they remembered me, they told me everything I couldn’t remember.”
To date, 40 per cent of ticket sales are already sold for the STARS lottery.
The total tickets printed are $145,800. A grand total of 15,000 individual tickets are on sale at $60 each, with 32,400 sets of two for $100, 8,000 sets of 6 for $250, and 1,500 sets of 12 for $375.
There is an Early Bird draw on July 17 and the prize package for that is a 2015 Ford F150 Platinum Crew Cab plus a 2015 219 UU Caravelle Razor with trailer, retail value of $138,000. Only tickets purchased by midnight July 2 will be eligible for that draw.
There is also a Lucky Stars 50/50 draw on August 10 where you can win up to $800,000. The final draw goes August 12 and only tickets purchased by midnight July 22, 2015 are eligible for that.
Tickets are available online at starslotterysaskatchewan.ca, by phone at 1-855-4492444, or by mail at STARS Lottery 2015 PO Box 1515, Regina, SK, S4P 3C2. Or you can apply in person at either of the two show homes or at the STARS bases in Regina and Saskatoon.
