Two members of the Knights of Columbus led a series of helicopter rescue missions in Haiti this spring, eventually bringing 143 people out of the war-torn country.
Pilot Anthony Marinello and co-pilot Benny Matos flew a Sikorsky S-76 into Haiti three times beginning March 12, rescuing people who were stuck in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Most of those rescued were Americans.
The mission had to fly at night at first to minimize the risk of being shot at from the ground — and then deal with red tape getting people out of Haiti.
“I’ve captured hundreds of criminals by helicopter, operated thousands of medevac flights, and this was the most intense thing I’ve ever done,” Marinello, a law enforcement pilot for more than 20 years, told the Knights of Columbus magazine Columbia. “We risked our lives, but it was up to us to get this thing done.”
Added Matos, a longtime New Jersey state trooper who is an insurance agent for the Knights: “It didn’t matter if it was average Joes or corporation presidents. All we knew was that people needed to be saved, and that was enough for me.”
It was the first call for Marinello since he started a helicopter air medical service, Tropic Air Rescue, just a little over a week before. After armed gangs had united in their opposition to the prime minister, who was away on a foreign trip, they shut down the international airport, stranding hundreds of foreigners.
Among them were Mitch Albom, a bestselling author based in Michigan, and nine other Americans visiting an orphanage that he established in Port-au-Prince. A member of the group contacted a congresswoman in Michigan for assistance in getting them out of the country. She in turn contacted a congressional colleague from Florida, Cory Mills, a US Army veteran who had rescued Americans from dangerous situations before. Mills’ staff in turn began looking for help with the Haiti mission. Twelve pilots indicated that they were unable or unwilling to take on the job.
Secret landing location
Marinello was the 13th person to be called, and when his phone rang the evening of March 10, he heard someone say, “I’m calling from the office of Congressman Cory Mills. Can you fly a mission to rescue Americans in Haiti? You’d need to leave tonight.”
“I thought about it for a minute, and I said, ‘Yeah, I think we can do that,’” said Marinello, a member of John A. Hill Council 4955 in Pompano Beach.
Marinello contacted Matos, with whom he had served in the New Jersey State Police. Coincidentally, Matos that afternoon had attended an exemplification – an initiation – for new Knights.
“When he said these Americans were serving an orphanage, the first thing I thought about was Fr. [Michael J.] McGivney and his care for orphans,” Matos said. “My ‘yes’ was instant after that.”
Matos and Marinello would be joined on the mission by Congressman Mills and Brian Young, a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran. They made four stops for gas and further strategizing – in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Puerto Plata and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – before moving over to Haiti. They had to agree with the group to be rescued on a secret location to land.
As they prepared to fly into Haiti, Mills asked Matos, who serves as a permanent deacon at Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles Parish in Royal Palm Beach, to offer a prayer and blessing for the group.
Columbia described the delicate operation:
Around 2 a.m., the crew began the 30-minute flight from Santo Domingo to the new pickup location. Given the sudden change, Marinello had only a satellite image of the location — he would be landing almost sight unseen. To help him find the spot, he instructed the evacuees to listen for the helicopter and then “blink every light in the house like a Christmas tree.”
The chopper spent only about a minute on the ground, as 10 people piled in. And then it was back to the Dominican Republic where the rescued group could get a flight to the US.
Within a few days, the state of Florida reached out to Marinello about doing a second rescue mission, this time coordinated with Haitian officials. And so they returned, on March 18. But this time, Haitian officials stopped them from taking off, citing problems with paperwork. Finally, after two days, they were allowed to depart for a rescue of 14 people from a UN landing zone in Port-au-Prince.
“There, the pilots experienced a taste of the violent chaos that had enveloped the city. An armed group of Haitians tried to prevent them from taking the people to be evacuated,” Columbia reported. “Security guards connected to the evacuees pushed back. Helping people into the helicopter, Matos — unarmed because it was a civilian operation — was stuck in the middle. ‘I had to push one guy and punch another just to get back into the helicopter,’ he said.”
“The helicopter returned to Cap-Haïtien for the evacuees to catch a US-bound jet. But, once again, the rescue crew wasn’t allowed to return home. They had taken off without permission, Haitian flight officials claimed, and needed to pay a $3,000 fine immediately.”
A third trip began April 8, and involved flying three to five missions a day for a week between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien. Most of those rescued were humanitarian aid workers.
And today we celebrate...