Medical Center Chaplain Makes House Calls at Disasters Across the Nation

Ioana Patringenaru | December 10, 2007

The room was full of Poway residents who had evacuated during the Witch Fire. The city’s deputy mayor read aloud a list of addresses of homes destroyed in the blazes. As he went along, some residents began to weep. Others rejoiced when it became clear their homes had been spared.

Chaplain Mark Reeves poses in front of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, in New Orleans.

Click here to view a slideshow of Chaplain Reeves

Mark Reeves, the chaplain at the UCSD Medical Center, stood by, ready to help. He felt very much like a spectator at the scene of an airplane crash, when officials read the casualty lists, he said.

Reeves knows what he is talking about. He is a member of the San Diego chapter of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which responds to catastrophes all over the nation. He flew to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and to New York after Sept. 11, 2001. For the past 16 years, he also has served as a chaplain for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, the San Diego County Medical Examiner and the City of Poway.

"We are very fortunate to have Chaplain Mark Reeves on our team," said Rich Liekweg, the chief executive officer of the UCSD Medical Center.

Reeves has a way of connecting with patients, families and caregivers even in the most trying of times, Liekweg said. “He has a genuine gift for sharing his compassion and concern, whether the setting is a personal crisis or a major disaster,” the chief executive officer added. “You can't help but benefit from seeing his warm smile and calming presence as he greets you, even if you're just walking through the medical center." 

October Fires

Reeves said that working during crises allows him to provide comfort not only to victims, but also to the emergency responders who are trying to care for them. He most recently used his skills during the wildfires that devastated San Diego County in October. He was at home Oct. 21, watching the news, when he was called to the incident command center at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest. He quickly put together a team of chaplains trained in crisis intervention, then braced for the arrival of victims. He didn’t have to wait long.

Reeves (far right, holding an award) and other members of San Diego's Disaster Medical Assistance Team.

That afternoon, the medical center’s burn unit received four firefighters and a teenage boy. The boy’s father, Thomas Varshock, had died earlier after trying to defend their home – the fires’ first victim. The boy’s mother, who wasn’t hurt, also arrived at Hillcrest. Reeves called on his contacts at the fire department to find out what happened.  

He also found out that firefighters wanted to express their condolences to Varshock’s widow. So he acted as a go-between to allow them to get together. “She was overwhelmed,” Reeves recalls. She was surrounded by neighbors, family and friends. But she worried about her son and how he would react when he found out his father had died. The two had been very close.

Reeves and his colleagues also worked with the families of migrant workers treated in the burn unit. He brought in bilingual chaplains to talk to their relatives. “We were really able to communicate with migrant families,” Reeves said. “We were really able to work closely with them, providing comfort and care.” Reeves himself met several times with the husband of a female migrant worker. The story of the woman's plight was carried in a front-page story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. She later passed away, leaving behind her spouse and four children.

Reeves also turned his attention to the medical center’s staff.

“They feel the loss and they know the pain,” he said.

Some staff members had been evacuated, others were trying to find out if their homes withstood the fires. Reeves asked them where they live, whether they had been evacuated and how they were holding up. Then he used his connections within the fire department to answer some of their questions and to let them know where the fires were headed.

Hurricane Katrina and 9/11

Left: Reeves helps triage patients in New Orleans. Right: with fellow DMAT team members in Mississippi during Hurricane Dennis.

Reeves was available to assist the more than 50 victims the UCSD Medical Center burn unit treated during this year’s fires. But he has been in disasters when he worked with many more. In New Orleans in 2005, he served at the Louis Armstrong International Airport, where emergency responders saw 23,000 people in three days, including 5,000 with medical conditions. Reeves helped unload patients from helicopters, triaged them and gave them shots. He got to meet with several high-level officials, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Vice President Al Gore.

At one point, Reeves helped care for 82 patients who were critically wounded and expected to die. In the end, 26 passed away. DMAT team members held patients' hands and spoke to them softly as they passed. Reeves comforted family members and prepared the patient's bodies for viewing. He said he felt tired in New Orleans, but was able to pull himself together. He had more trouble in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks, he added.

“At the World Trade Center, there were no saves,” he said.

He worked at an on-site morgue in New York. Then he was assigned to Staten Island, where he performed the final inspection of debris from the attack. The goal was to find the last remnants of victims and their personal belongings. He remembers standing over a conveyor belt for 12 hours a day, while a complicated contraption scooped out debris and put them through several sifts. Reeves picked out bones, teeth, rings. After a week of this, he just couldn’t keep it up, he said.

“It was lives passing by, passing by,” he recalled. “It was just too much.”

His life

Reeves was born in Virginia 45 years ago. His father was in the military, and his family moved to the Kearney Mesa area in San Diego when Reeves was a small child. “I’m almost a native,” he joked.

Reeves helps patients get off a helicopter in New Orleans

He traces his interest for the ministry back to high school. One of his friends was studying to be a priest. His joy, his caring attitude and his gentle spirit were quite an inspiration, Reeves said. They also were quite unique among the high school crowd, he pointed out.

Reeves went on to study theology at Azusa Pacific. He also studied at the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation in Baltimore, Md. He served as a pastor at the Horizon Christian Fellowship in Poway for 12 years. As part of his assignment at the church, he worked as a chaplain for the San Diego County Medical Examiner, as well as a chaplain for the Red Cross.

Three years ago, he left Horizon to become the first staff chaplain at the UCSD Medical Center. It looked like a great opportunity to use his experience to help the university develop a new program, he said. He still serves on the DMAT team and as fire chaplain for the City of Poway and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

He is on call 24/7. Most weeks, he puts in at least 60 hours, he said. A cadre of about 50 volunteers is a tremendous help, he added. His twin boys, age 18, and his daughter, age 15, sometimes ride to assignments with him when he gets paged. Then they wait for him while he does his job. “We try to do as much as we can together when I’m not being paged,” Reeves said. His wife is studying to become a licensed vocational nurse, so she stays home with the children, he added. One of his twin boys, Matthew, would like to become a chaplain too.

“I think that’s great,” Reeves said. “I think he really has the heart for it.”