Flight Nurse Shelia Marie Zellers

Nurse Zellers, along with three other crew members, lost her life when their helicopter ambulance crashed on a tree-covered, rocky mountainside in Breathitt County, Kentucky. After a quiet day of work in Jackson, the four were headed back to UK Hospital in Lexington. Their helicopter ambulance crashed just minutes after liftoff in dense fog.

Nurse Zellers began her nursing career in her home county at Twin Lakes Medical Center in Leitchfield, Kentucky after graduating nursing school in 1985. Later that same year, she took a staff nurse position at the University of Kentucky Hospital in the Neurosurgical ICU where she worked four years before moving to the emergency department. In 1991, she was honored to become a UK flight nurse.