Making good on
the bucket list

Martinez ended up as an emergency room and trauma nurse, where her work turned out to be everything she had hoped for. “It sounds corny, but I feel like this is what I was meant to do,” she says. “We see people at one of the worst moments of their lives, and we get to do something to help them. In my job, I really get to make a difference for people.”

Up in the air

One day, Martinez ran into a former colleague who had been working as a medical flight nurse for many years. “I told her that was one of my bucket list items,” she says. “She said, ‘Come fly with us.’” Martinez decided to go for it, and after a grueling interview process, she began moonlighting as a flight nurse with Aircare1 International, a medical transport company.

Her work took her across the United States and into Canada and Mexico, where she would care for patients during long-distance medical transport trips. “It was a ton of fun,” Martinez says, laughing. “We were scooting around in a Learjet 35A. You never knew quite what you were getting into.”

Martinez continued to work in medical transport for two years until she decided to pursue yet another dream: her bachelor’s degree.

Lifelong learning and teaching

“I always knew I wanted to go on with my education after my associate’s degree,” Martinez admits. During her associate’s degree program, an instructor gave her words of encouragement that would have a lasting impact. Ultimately, this counsel helped her finally commit to furthering her education. “She asked me how old I was at the time, and I told her. Then she asked me how old I would be the following year,” remembers Martinez. “I told her I would be 35. Then she said to me, ‘Well, you’re going to be 35 next year either way, so you might as well have one class under your belt.’”

That advice stuck with Martinez, who at age 42 enrolled at University of Phoenix to pursue her BSN degree. She was delighted to be able to work her class schedule around her daughter’s wedding and her son’s graduation. “It was the perfect fit for me,” asserts Martinez.

In addition to educating herself, Martinez also has a passion for passing on knowledge to others. Seven years ago, when her youngest son was turning 15, she was struck with fear every time an auto accident victim would come into her emergency room from her Albuquerque suburb. “I would think to myself, ‘I hope it’s not one of my son’s friends or a kid I know,” Martinez says. “That weighed on me for a long time.”

One day, she decided to do something about it. She called her son’s driver’s education teacher and volunteered to speak to his students about what can happen to them when they make unsafe choices while driving. “He laughed and told me he had been trying to get an emergency room nurse to come and talk to his kids for years,” she says.

Every six weeks, Martinez goes to the high school to speak to a new group of students about what happens to trauma victims in the emergency room—and how they can avoid the experience. In seven years, she has missed only one class when she was unavoidably stuck on a medical transport flight.
Despite her busy schedule, Martinez makes this work a priority because she believes it can make a difference. “If there’s just one kid who listens, then it is worth it to me,” she says.

Next up

Today, the sky’s the limit for Martinez, who now is studying to become a nurse practitioner. Though busy with school and her work in the emergency room, Martinez also has taken up a new hobby—something she always has wanted to do. “I am learning to play the banjo,” she reveals. This zest for life captures Martinez’s belief that it is never too late to pursue your dreams. “I don’t want to be one of those people who sits back when I’m 70 or 80 and says that I should have done this and I should have done that,” she says. “I’m doing the stuff I want to do.”