2018-Feb-27

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Soaring the Skies with Time2Give

BY DORON OZ · PRODUCT LINE MANAGER · UNITED STATES

I joined Cisco 17 years ago via the Pentacom acquisition, and during my years in Cisco I have worked in various engineering and product management positions. Before joining Cisco I worked for several networking companies, and prior to that I served as a Captain in the Israeli Air Force.

I love to fly and have flown planes recreationally for the last 20 years.  In 2016 a friend introduced me to Angel Flight West (AFW). AFW is a wonderful nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization that arranges free, non-emergency air travel for children and adults with serious medical conditions and other compelling needs. This service enables them to receive vital medical treatment that might otherwise be inaccessible for them because of financial, medical, and geographic limitations.

I am one of over 1,400 pilots throughout the 13 western states of the U.S. that donate their piloting skills to help families in need. About once a month, I volunteer using my Time2Give to fly missions, within California and to Oregon and Nevada. Flying the plane needs my whole attention, so I usually take someone with me, a friend or a fellow Cisco employee, to assist with the whole operation.

Traveling from small airports in the immediate vicinity of the patients’ homes directly to the Palo Alto Airport, which is ten minutes away from medical facilities in Stanford, makes a vast difference compared to driving or flying with an airline from a major airport. I recently flew a baby boy and his mother from Redding to treatment in Stanford, a one-hour flight, which enabled them to make it an easy single-day trip. If it had been necessary for them to drive it, it would have meant spending ten hours on the road and a night in Palo Alto. For a tiny baby in pain this makes a huge difference.

On one mission which I particularly remember, we flew an eleven-year-old kid (same age as my eldest son) with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (a severe, degenerative, fatal, non-curable disease) to his medical appointment. It was his first time in a small plane and he was super excited about it, and I even diverted to go see San Francisco from above. At the end of the flight he told me he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, which broke my heart—DMD has no cure today, so heartbreakingly he probably won’t make it to adulthood.

The AFW pilots who volunteer, fly thousands of such missions a year, making the lives of those who have enough troubles as it is, just a little bit easier.

I enjoy flying, and the fact that I can use my ability to fly to benefit someone else in a major way gives me a lot of satisfaction. It’s my way of helping to make a difference to families that are already going through so much. The people I meet, and the problems they face, put all my own problems back in proportion.

The Cisco Time2Give program gives me the time needed to invest in this activity, which naturally is mostly needed on weekdays. I’m grateful to Cisco and for the Time2Give program for empowering and backing us up, by giving us the time off to volunteer for important causes that we choose to support.

Related Links:

• Angels Flight West
• Find jobs at Cisco
• Follow @WeAreCisco to see more about the Cisco Life!
• Time2Give Program

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