Sonya Clark and her three team members will return to Iraq in the New Year to assist refugees.
Performing ice water rescues in Alaska. Supplying medical equipment to families in refugee camps. Supporting women coming out of Islamic State captivity. Sonya Clark, from Fort St. John, does it all.
Born at Mile 60 on the Alaska Highway in a 180-square foot house without running water, Clark’s life has taken a far different turn than she could have imagined in her younger years.
“If somebody would have told me 10 years ago that I’d be 45 and jumping out of a helicopter, I’d tell them they were cracked,” she said in an interview with the Alaska Highway News.
As the founder of Mahwahdayoh Medical Rescue (MMR), primarily a service provider for the oil and gas industry, Clark has made it her life’s mission to help others. If somebody needs help, such as the three people who fell through the ice in Bethel, Alaska, last winter, she’ll readily execute the rescue on her own dime.
This Thanksgiving, her MMR team was happy to return home from Iraq, where they were providing medical care in a refugee camp.
“People just throw their belongings in their vehicle and they get away from the situation that they’re in, that they need to leave, so they leave with a bunch of clothes and whatever they can get,” Clark explained.
The group regularly travels around the world to crisis situations, assisting where they can. At the Iraqi refugee camp, that included tracking down a container of baby milk when supplies ran out.
Another fellow they helped at the camp had a colostomy, and was forced to leave his house with only one spare colostomy bag.
“If you know anything at all about colostomies, I mean they fill up, they need to be sterile . . . and he’s got one, I mean he uses one and he washes one. It’s disgusting. So we accessed an entire case of colostomy bags for him in the country,” said Clark. “It just is the right thing to do.”
Clark, whose business is based out of Grande Prairie, is by profession a primary care paramedic. When she works in Alberta, she’s an emergency medical technician. When she’s overseas, they call her ‘Doc.’
It all started in 2009. Clark was working two non-medical jobs, trying to make ends meet, when an old friend contacted her over social media asking her if she would be his medic that winter.
She responded instantly with a firm “no.” After all, she wasn’t qualified. But when he told her what they were willing to pay, she quickly changed her mind.
Clark hopped on a plane to her hometown of Fort St. John and signed up for the courses she’d need. The plan: to work for a winter, make a bunch of money, and leave come springtime. That isn’t what happened.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said. “I went and got my EMR (emergency medical responder) and then I went and got my EMT (emergency medical technician), and then I got into the fire side and the rescue side, and I am just so in love with the learning process.”
Clark hasn’t stopped taking courses. She went to Denmark and took combat medicine, and took flight medicine in Florida. Several times each year, she and the rest of MMR update their skills with fire response, medical and rescue training.
Her company, which she started in 2010, now conducts rescue missions around the globe. She and her small team of three try to do two or three big medical rescue missions each year. MMR funds it all.
“We have very low operating costs, so at the end of the year we look at ways that we can give back,” Clark said.
Recently, MMR teamed up with Steve Maman, president at the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, who lives in Montreal. His organization specializes in liberating women who have been kidnapped by ISIS, and returning them to their families.
MMR helps by providing medical support for the women coming out of
captivity.
“We go with them to the exchange point and we see these women and these children and we provide their emergency medical care… we provide any support that we can, and anything that’s identifiable we provide that immediately,” Clark said.
Next year, she and her MMR team plan to return to Iraq and provide further care to the refugees there.
“It’s just life giving to be part of that,” Clark said.