Martin DeBerardinis and Angel Flight

Martin DeBerardinis Jr. is a healthcare hero at work and a flying angel on his own time. Not content to help patients in his day job as director of Medicines Evaluation at AstraZeneca, he's also a pilot for Angel Flight, a nonprofit that connects volunteer pilots with needy patients.

Sometimes patients need better medical care than they can get close to home, and it's too expensive for them to get there. Angel Flight and its pilots make the distant care possible.

But DeBerardinis has learned that the service is about more than physical travel. The time the pilots and patients have together in the air also is an emotional journey, a time for intimate conversation and personal reflection.

"They're developing a perspective sometimes during a flight," DeBerardinis said, noting that he likes to engage the patients in conversation. "It's away from their concerns, and sometimes they start to relax a little bit. And sometimes it catches them by surprise, and they'll think about what's happening to them."

On one memorable flight, he comforted a guilt-ridden mother who blamed herself for the tragedy that burned much of her 7-year-old girl's body by telling her about his own experience as a burn victim when he was a child.

"She needed sort of that emotional support as much as she needed to get from Point A to Point B on that particular flight," DeBerardinis said, "and I was glad that I had some experience that I could share with her. ... So sometimes it helps just to have an ear."