16 | JUNE 1 • 2023
O
n a 15-hour flight
home from South
Africa, a call came
on the loudspeaker asking
for a nurse or a medical
professional onboard. A
woman at the back of the
Delta plane was having a
medical emergency, and a
few minutes went by that no
one answered the call.
Incoming Michigan
State University medical
student Paige Stearn, 23, of
Bloomfield Hills looked to
her mother, Terri Stearn, an
MSU Hillel board member,
for guidance.
“I didn’t know whether
to press my button or not,”
Paige Stearn recalls. “I’m an
EMT. I’m not a doctor yet.”
Paige Stearn was a trained
EMT professional who
had worked at Medstar
in Lansing, only recently
resigning from her position
as she gets ready to start
classes at the College of
Osteopathic Medicine, where
she is expected to graduate
in 2027.
However, her mother told
her to press the button. Paige
Stearn lit up the button that
alerts a flight attendant to
her seat and informed them
that she was an EMT.
JUMPING INTO ACTION
She was rushed to the
back of the plane, where a
23-year-old pregnant woman
was in “horrible pain.”
Stearn took the young
woman’s blood pressure,
pulse and saturated oxygen.
While her blood pressure
was a little low, the vitals
were mostly normal. “I
wasn’t too concerned about
a life-threatening situation,”
Stearn recalls of the May 16
flight.
While a doctor from South
Africa assisted the situation,
he didn’t have any emergency
medical training and
looked to Stearn as the lead.
Together, and in conjunction
with medical control on the
ground, they decided to give
her medication to ease the
pain.
They also put the woman
on oxygen in case she would
go into shock.
For the remaining three
hours of the flight, Stearn
stayed by the pregnant
woman’s side. She kept in
constant contact with ground
control, who readied an
ambulance on the runway to
meet the Delta flight as soon
as it landed at Detroit Metro
Airport.
Stearn’s father, Todd
Stearn, a board member
and vice president of
Congregation Beth Ahm,
went to check on his
daughter, but reported to his
wife that she “had it under
control.”
Terri Stearn also says that
the entire flight stayed seated
during the emergency.
As soon as the flight
landed, medical personnel
boarded the plane.
Paige Stearn briefed the
paramedics on the situation
and the pregnant woman was
taken off the plane before
anyone else could disembark.
REDISCOVERING
STRENGTH
For Stearn, who was an MSU
student and on campus the
night of the school shooting
on Feb. 13, where three
students were killed, the
in-flight emergency was a
moment that solidified her
desire to one day become a
doctor.
During the school
shooting, Stearn was
teaching a yoga class and
helped her students stay
calm and hidden. While her
mother says her daughter
was OK at first, the emotions
surfaced in the coming days,
eventually turning into a
tidal wave.
“She told me, ‘I don’t think
I want to go into emergency
medicine anymore,’” Terri
Stearn recalls. “‘I would
have been the person at
the hospital receiving these
OUR COMMUNITY
MSU medical student and school
shooting survivor helps
woman in distress.
In-Flight
Emergency
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE STEARN FAMILY
Paige Stean
in South
Africa.
“I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER TO
PRESS MY BUTTON OR NOT. I’M AN
EMT. I’M NOT A DOCTOR YET.”
— PAIGE STEARN