The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center is not a place people want to end up.
That included Montgomery County Police Sgt. Patrick Kepp and Frederick County farmer Zene Wolfe.
Kepp was hit by a car going over a hundred miles an hour, as he was attempting to make a traffic stop in 2023.
Wolfe got pinned by a skid loader when he was moving bales of hay, back in 2022.
The 80 trauma professionals and first responders who treated them were honored this weekend at the 34th annual Shock Trauma Heros Celebration.
"No one plans to come to Shock Trauma," says Dr. Thomas Scalea, the hospital's Physician-in-Chief and System Chief of Critical Care Services for the University of Maryland Medical System. "Each patient is a victim of an unscheduled tragedy, and every situation is unique. We never know what medical emergency we will face, but we are always ready no matter the circumstance."
The crash Kepp endured severed parts of his leg. He underwent 10 surgeries in the course of a couple of months.
"The care at Shock Trauma is second to none," Kepp says. "Every nurse and tech and obviously the doctors went above and beyond."
When Wolfe's wife found him, after he wriggled out of the loader, he told her "'I'm really sorry, I'm going to die.'"
He spent six-and-a-half weeks at Shock Trauma.
"I'm 90 percent back to normal," he says now. "It's a team effort, all the nurses, the techs, the people who cleaned my room, everybody. It wasn't like I was a job. I was a person."
