In the Air, In the Hospital, In the Community: Angel on a Mission

Angel has seen just about everything in his three decades at Shriners Children’s Texas, including transport flights in the middle of the night, a devastating hurricane and a transformational merger. Through all these changes and at every challenge, one thing stayed constant for him – his compassion for the mission and his drive to help children, often with the most serious burn injuries imaginable.

His connection to Shriners Children’s Texas began during his final semester of nursing school at the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the time, Angel planned to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist. But that all changed the moment he walked into Shriners Children’s Texas for his pediatric rotation. He remembered feeling drawn to the Shriners' mission and the people who worked there almost immediately. “I did a clinical rotation here in nursing school and fell in love with it,” he said. “I knew right away that this was where I wanted to work.”

After the rotation ended, Angel couldn’t get the hospital out of his mind. Every morning before class, he’d pick up the phone and call to see if there were any openings. “I called every day,” he said. “Every day until finally they said, ‘You know what, come on in.’” That call turned into an interview, and the interview turned into a lifelong career. His persistence paid off, and soon he began working in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Within a year, Angel was promoted to charge nurse and then asked to help in the tub room, a space known for some of the toughest, most emotional work in the hospital. “They told me it would be for six weeks,” he said. “I ended up staying for a year and a half.” Angel assisted with cleaning burns and used every opportunity to teach parents how to continue wound care at home. “I always tried to make wound care a learning moment,” he said. “I’d teach parents how to clean and dress the wounds, step by step, until they felt confident doing it themselves.”

In the 1990s, he stepped into a newly created role as a resource nurse, cross-training in nearly every department – the operating room, physical therapy, the plastic surgery floor and the PICU – which also introduced him to one of the unique aspects of Shriners Children's care: patient transport.

For more than a decade, Angel served as a flight nurse, flying across the country and overseas to bring children in need of specialized burn care to Shriners Children’s Texas. “Those were some of the hardest but most rewarding years of my life,” Angel said. “You’d get a call in the middle of the night. A child in Mexico or Central America had been burned, and they needed help right away. You’d pack your bag, call your partner and go.”

“You’d walk into a hospital that looked like something out of the 50s,” he said. “They’d done everything they could, but they couldn’t take the patient any further.” Often, parents couldn’t accompany their child on the flight because there was not enough space on the aircraft. So, Angel became both nurse and caretaker for the long journey home. “There were a lot of times I had these adopted children for five or six hours,” he said. “It was easy to say, I’m going to treat this child like it’s my child, because that’s what we did.”

Over the years, Angel helped hundreds of “adopted children,” each one temporarily his to look after. Every time he returned to Galveston, he made sure to call the parents who had trusted him with their child. It was a small gesture, but one he believed mattered deeply. Those years shaped how Angel viewed responsibility – to his patients, their families and his community – a perspective that proved important when the next challenge came.

In September 2008, Hurricane Ike tore through Galveston, nearly devastating the island and the hospital. Staff members were furloughed while repairs were underway. “It was devastating,” Angel said. “We didn’t even know if the hospital would reopen.”

But Angel didn’t sit still. Along with a group of coworkers, he formed what they called the "Muck out Team." For seven weeks straight, the team would drive to Galveston each morning with special passes to let them through. They gutted houses, cleaned debris and checked on every staff member.