When Dana Longo came to the United States from her home in Vilnius, Lithuania, to visit her aunt in Connecticut in 1992, she planned to visit for six weeks.

She ended up changing her airline ticket six times. “It ended up being the most expensive airline ticket in history. In the end, I didn’t go home and a year later, I got married,” Longo said.

By then, Longo decided to go to college and one day came home and asked her husband, “What is the Army National Guard?” She had heard it was a way to get an education, she said.

And for her, the Army was. She earned first her associate’s degree, then her bachelor’s degree and finally her master’s of business administration degree.

Enlisting “was the best decision of my life,” she said.

She was deployed to Kuwait for one year as a member of a helicopter unit, where she had an administrative role.

After 11 years and 11 months in the Army, she submitted her package to both the Air Force and the Navy and decided to enter the Air Force as part of its medical service corps.

“On my last day in the Army, I came to work in my green Army uniform and I left in my blue Air Force uniform,” Longo said.

She has been in the Air Force for nearly five years, stationed in North Carolina. As part of her work there, she helped assemble a Mobile Aeromedical Staging Facility during Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike. The facility’s personnel helped to transfer 353 patients on planes. Most were being evacuated from nursing homes.

Age: 40

Address: Albert Lea

Livelihood: administrative fellow at Albert Lea Medical Center

Family: husband, John

Interesting fact: She is a vegetarian because she loves animals. Her husband is a vegetarian for health reasons.

“My role is to make the arrangements with the planes and make sure the right patients are on the right planes,” Longo said.

She was part of a 13-member team. Two of those members were administrative, like Longo, and the rest were nurses to comfort the patients.

“I’ve never seen so many ambulances,” Longo said.

She said these teams are ready to provide support and stay on the scene for up to 30 days if necessary. “We are even able to establish a hospital if we have to do that,” she added.

Now, Capt. Longo has been assigned to Albert Lea Medical Center as part of an Education with Industry agreement with the U.S. Air Force. The program places Air Force officers in civilian institutions as part of their ongoing educational requirements. Longo got to Albert Lea at the end of August and will be at ALMC until the end of June. After that, she’ll be assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“The opportunity to dialogue on best practices at both ALMC and the Air Force Medical Services makes this a beneficial relationship for both parties,” said Jerry Ehn, service line administrator and Longo’s mentor in the program. Longo is the third administrative fellow to be assigned to ALMC through this program, Ehn added.

“The main focus is that there is always room for improvement,” said Longo. “We can see how the civilian sectors work, and bring that knowledge back to the Air Force.”

So far, she’s done an analysis of how patients who don’t show up for scheduled appointments affect the medical center financially and otherwise.

“People don’t realize what kind of impact no-shows bring,” she said, adding no-shows not only cost the medical center in terms of lost appointments, but patients who need to see a provider could have used that scheduled appointment.

She’s also on the committee to decide how to best deal with H1N1 influenza outbreaks.

Her next task, she said is to do some long-range work on a project that would allow different facilities to access patients’ radiology reports. “This would be a great advantage for the patient,” Longo said.

Longo will work with a number of different departments at the medical center before her fellowship is over.

Meanwhile, she’s enjoying her time here. “I absolutely love it,” she said. “It’s a small community. It’s so peaceful. It’s like a piece of heaven.”

She especially enjoys bike riding and runs five days a week with another ALMC employee.

She and her husband also enjoy traveling and seeing as much of the country as they can. Since coming to Albert Lea, they’ve explored Minneapolis and Mason City, Iowa, and in the spring hope to see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.