Last fall, South Metro Fire Rescue (SMFR) and AdventHealth Parker launched a groundbreaking collaboration to ensure trauma patients receive lifesaving blood transfusions before ever reaching the hospital. This partnership, one of the first of its kind in Colorado, is setting a new standard for emergency medical care and community benefit. This initiative equips EMS supervisors with two units of O-negative blood to give to patients in hemorrhagic shock. Some examples include traumatic injuries, gastrointestinal bleeds, or even pregnancy complications. The packed red blood cells are stored in advanced coolers with continuous temperature monitoring. If unused, the blood is returned to AdventHealth Parker’s blood bank within two weeks, ensuring zero waste. “Studies have shown that hemorrhage or bleeding is a leading cause of potentially survivable prehospital death. Prehospital blood transfusions significantly reduce mortality risk. The sooner the patient can receive blood, the more lives can be saved,” said Kelly Jung, regional director of trauma and EMS for AdventHealth in the Rocky Mountain Region. The program is funded through the AdventHealth Parker Foundation and is available to all patients transported by SMFR, regardless of whether they are taken to an AdventHealth hospital. Thanks to the support from the Foundation, it means patients will not incur any additional bills for the treatment. “This initiative is entirely supported through philanthropy. Our goal is to bring the best opportunity to have lifesaving blood prior to arriving at the hospital, saving critical time and increasing survival rates,” said Harmony Furlong, director of the AdventHealth Parker Foundation. This partnership was the brainchild of Jonathan Apfelbaum, MD, medical director for South Metro Fire Rescue and longtime emergency physician at AdventHealth Parker. He says the program represents years of data collection, advocacy and determination. “The data now shows that if we start blood within 30 minutes of injury, outcomes improve dramatically,” said Dr. Apfelbaum. “We looked at the evidence from similar blood programs in San Antonio, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. and they all showed fewer deaths, less blood needed overall, and shorter hospital stays when patients received a blood transfusion in the ambulance. We knew our community deserved this too.” This new program has the potential to help thousands of people in the Denver metro area. SMFR covers an impressive 300 square miles, and serves 600,000 people including those living in Parker, Highlands Ranch, Castle Pines, and Aurora. In the first month since the partnership launched, blood has already been used three times to help patients. “We’re proud to lead the way in the state,” said Jung. “As early adopters, we’re helping set a new standard of care in Colorado and across the nation. This is about giving our patients the very best chance at survival.” Thanks to the vision and dedication of SMFR, AdventHealth Parker, and their philanthropic supporters, more lives will have a fighting chance—before they ever reach the hospital doors. “I always tell my crews, take care of every patient as if they were your own family,” said Dr. Apfelbaum. “The whole goal is to do what’s best for our community.”

On August 21, 2025, Kevin Rider laced up his running shoes and headed out for his daily jog in Overland Park, Kansas. He deliberately chose busy areas over quiet streets or trails, a decision shaped by a traumatic cardiac arrest he suffered in 2021 while home alone. “Since then, I’ve always figured if I were to have another cardiac arrest, it’s better to be somewhere people can see you and help,” Rider said. As he paused at a familiar intersection to catch his breath and wait for the crosswalk signal, his prediction came true. Without warning, Rider collapsed. His heart had gone into ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib)—a life-threatening arrhythmia. The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed at AdventHealth Shawnee Mission with broken ribs and a fractured sternum. “Feeling the pain in my ribs and sternum, I knew someone had performed CPR,” said Rider, who has extensive training in medicine and science. “Whoever it was, they fought hard to keep me alive.” That someone was Grady Lenihan, an ICU nurse. Lenihan and a friend, also a nurse, were nearby when they came across a group of people surrounding an unresponsive man. They immediately began CPR, taking turns for nearly 10 minutes until EMS arrived. “My friend and I saw this man laying unresponsive on the sidewalk with some bystanders,” said Lenihan. “We pulled over to help and initiated CPR shortly after. Not knowing how long he was down, I was pessimistic about a favorable outcome; but that didn’t stop us from doing all we can.” Rider was transported to AdventHealth Shawnee Mission where he underwent a pacemaker procedure in the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU). Days later, while recovering, Rider experienced a powerful moment. An AdventHealth Shawnee Mission nurse floated to the unit from the ICU and walked into his room. As fate would have it, it was Lenihan, the very person who had helped save his life. Overwhelmed with this coincidence, Rider asked to take a photo with him and expressed heartfelt gratitude. His family, including his seven children, was deeply moved by the reunion. “It was a surreal and emotional moment seeing Kevin in the hospital conscious, standing up, talking and meeting his kids. It will be something I will never forget,” said Lenihan. “I think this story is a good example of the importance of knowing CPR and being good citizen, neighbor and friend in the community.” Recalling his 2021 cardiac arrest when he was alone, Rider said that due to the time it took to get him the help he needed, it left him in a three-week coma, with organ failure and memory loss. Though he recovered, he continued to live with kidney disease, battled onset prostate cancer and was left with a scar on his heart—believed to have contributed to this second cardiac event. “I personally know what happens when cardiac arrest goes untreated,” Rider said. “Had Grady and his friend not acted so quickly, I wouldn’t be here today.” Rider said he felt at peace being at AdventHealth Shawnee Mission. From the nurses to the physicians, he felt the care was exceptional. “You can tell this is a place of faith,” he said. In that CCU room, two lives intersected again—not at a crosswalk, but in a place where healing and humanity meet. Kevin Rider’s story is one of survival and serendipity. Thanks to the swift actions of a compassionate bystander who knew the importance of CPR and Rider’s own resilience, it’s a story that continues.

In 2026 I will be exploring early Sabbatarian Adventists in the states that now comprise the Mid-America Union. There is no way to know who the first Millerite or Adventist was in each state. Instead, I will feature the first people to write to the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (forerunner of the Adventist Review) from the territories or states in what is now the Mid-America Union. Baptist Minister Samuel Everett was a third cousin, once removed to Edward Everett, the famous politician and orator who spoke before Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. The author Edward Everett Hale was his fourth cousin. Samuel Everett, however, lived a humbler life than those of his more exalted relatives. Born on October 11, 1793, in Princeton, Massachusetts, to Joshua Everett and Ruth Wood, Samuel Everett experienced a conversion to Christianity in 1818 after which he felt the call to ministry. He attended the Baptist college in Waterville, Maine, where he enrolled in theology classes. (Then known as Waterville College, it became Colby College in 1867.) Everett graduated in 1823. By the time he married Lucinda Keyes* (September 14, 1798-January 9, 1868), in his home town of Princeton, Massachusetts, on February 9, 1825, he was the pastor of a Baptist congregation in Milford, New Hampshire. While in Milford, Everett was ordained and the couple’s first three children were born. In 1832, Everett was called to the church in Salisbury, New Hampshire. Three more children joined the family there. Everett became the Baptist minister in Holden, Massachusetts, in 1838, and a little more than a year later the family moved to North Leverett, Massachusetts, where they remained until 1852. From Millerite to Sabbatarian Adventist In early 1843 Samuel Everett joined the Millerite movement, accompanied by at least his wife and daughter. By early 1845, he was in conflict with his Baptist congregation and denominational leadership. The immediate flashpoint was Everett’s officiation of an open communion service in which unbaptized attendees were invited to participate. When Baptist leadership sought to discipline him, he “seceded” from the denomination. His stated reasons were that the Baptists had become proud and worldly in their wealth and increasing numbers. They resisted reform, and he no longer agreed with Baptist teaching in regard to eschatology and Jesus’ second advent. I joined the Baptist church from choice and from a conviction of duty, and I left it from a conviction of duty. I could never again join any church in its imperfect state on earth, where the right of secession for conscience sake is denied. The church was never intended to be a prison to the saints, but a voluntary company of brethren, bound together “in faith and love in Christ Jesus.”(“Secession”). Everett probably supported his family through farming, but curiously the 1850 U. S. Census still lists his occupation as a Baptist minister. According to the Millerite periodical, The Advent Herald and Morning Watch, he was involved in at least one weekend Bible conference of the many held in various homes during this period. Over a year after leaving the Baptist denomination, he was still concerned about the spiritual state of Advent believers who remained in organized denominations. We are glad to know that there are still some brethren who love the appearing of the Lord among our opponents…One, not long since, expressed the opinion that we have been hasty in seceding. I think not. We did not take such a course, till we saw that “the advent near” was rejected by them, as a body,—Even then, some of us waited for months, loth to leave and to give over our labors for their good. (Letter from Bro. S. Everett) Everett’s separation from the denomination for which he had labored so many years was difficult in many ways. Yet, his letters of the late 1840s call for a loving, brotherly spirit among the Advent believers. Everett did not give the seventh-day Sabbath as one of his reasons for leaving the Baptist denomination, but in April 1852, he wrote a letter to the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald outlining biblical support for it (“From Bro. Everett”). In July he announced that he would be meeting with seventh-day-keeping Advent believers in Bennington, New Hampshire, and Munsonville (probably in New Hampshire, although New York is a possibility, although there is no record of Everett preaching in New York) on two successive weekends in mid-summer. The next time Everett wrote to the Review, he, Lucinda, and their twelve-year-son, William Stillman (1837-1881), had moved to Iowa City, Iowa. Life in Iowa A desire to spread “present truth” seems to have been Everett’s motivation for moving to Iowa at the age of fifty-nine in October of 1852 (“From Bro. Everett”). In Massachusetts the Everetts left behind a host of family, friends, and acquaintances, including their oldest son, Samuel Pearce (or Pierce), and daughter, Lucinda Elizabeth (1829-1853) known as Elizabeth to avoid confusion with her mother. Three of their six children, Joshua Titus (1827-1846), Mary Jane (1832-1834), and George Boardman (1835-1836), had already died. Lucinda Elizabeth married Whitman Fiske Higgins in 1849, but died on July 5, 1853, before having any children of her own. Lucinda wrote a lengthy and touching tribute to her daughter, published in the Adventist Review and Sabbath Herald on October 11, 1853. Elizabeth’s death contributed to the great loneliness that her parents mentioned in their correspondence with the Review. Near the end of her tribute to Elizabeth, Lucinda wrote: The loss to us is great. We are a lonely family with but few to keep the Sabbath or tell of the coming of the Lord. We need much wisdom and grace; and I trust we shall have the sympathy and prayers of the brethren and sisters who may read these lines. We are waiting to hear what the Lord will speak to us, and what he would have us do (“From Sister Everett”). In 1856, about the time well-known Adventist families such <a class="cat-post-excerpt-more" href="https://www.outlookmag.org/samuel-everett-baptist-millerite-adventist-independent/" title="Continue reading Samuel Everett: Baptist, Millerite, Adventist, Independent The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald’s first correspondent from Iowa.“>Read more…

“Can we learn in the sand again today?” That’s the first question I hear every morning. And the answer for two weeks was yes! This year, our kindergarten classroom at Vista Ridge Academy in Erie, Colorado, transformed into something extraordinary: a classroom-sized sandbox where all our learning happened through hands-on, sensory-rich exploration. What began as a creative idea to help students engage their senses became one of the most joyful and faith-filled learning environments I’ve ever experienced. Each morning began with a prayer and a short worship thought—often beach or ocean- themed—reminding us that “God made everything, from the sand beneath our feet to the stars above our heads.” Then, the learning begins. On the day pictured here, we explored the letter D for dolphins, dig and discover. Students used shovels and buckets to build sandcastles and trace the letter D in the sand on top. Then they began adding more castles and letters to form words such as dad, dot and had. After blending words together, the pre-K students visited our classroom, and we began digging for dinosaurs. As we worked, we practiced our letter sounds: “D says /d/, like dinosaurs digging deep!” The sandbox became a joyful place of learning and laughter as children connected their phonics practice to real-world textures and play. When we gathered at the end of class, one kindergarten student summed it up perfectly: “I love working in the sand because it feels like we get to play all day, and learning is fun!” Each day, I watched my students grow more confident—not only in reading and writing but also in gratitude. Our sandbox wasn’t just about phonics. We used it for Bible stories, math concepts, social studies and science units about the ocean. Every subject becomes an adventure when students can dig, build and discover with their own hands. Kindergarten parent Alba Santos was thrilled for her daughter to have this experience saying, “I was so happy my child could experience something different in the classroom. She was excited to come to school every day and loved learning interesting facts about ocean animals.” Through this experience, I’ve seen students grow in cooperation, curiosity and gratitude. They weren’t just learning about God’s creation, they were learning within it. As Beach Week came to a joyful close, the kindergarten students gathered for a celebration of learning and praise. The classroom shimmered like a seaside festival, with students singing cheerful songs about the continents and oceans, proudly sharing what they had discovered about God’s world. Laughter and music filled the air as each child stepped forward, dressed as a colorful sea creature—from lobster to jellyfish—and confidently shared fun facts they had memorized. The culmination party was more than a performance; it was a reflection of two weeks spent learning through wonder, creativity and faith. With sandy hands and shining eyes, students celebrated not just what they learned, but the God who made it all. Mathias Gallaher is the kindergarten teacher at Vista Ridge Academy.