By Elise Takahama
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — To one former student, Dr. Michael Copass II was a version of Batman, who kept a watchful eye over his city: Harborview Medical Center’s emergency department.
Others were reminded of famous French humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, war generals and sports icons. The comparisons go on. But all agree that nearly everything Copass did, he did with brilliance, fire and heart.
Copass, a born-and-raised Seattleite and pioneer in the field of emergency medicine, was 86 when he died at a Gig Harbor skilled nursing facility July 26.
“He was as much an institution as anybody ever could be,” said Dr. Steve Mitchell, who knew Copass for more than 40 years and worked with him in and out of the hospital. “At his core, it was about, ‘How do I serve the people that I’ve been trusted to take care of?’ [His leadership] set the culture of what Harborview still is today.”
Although Copass trained in neurology and continued to practice that specialty until he retired in 2013, he’s perhaps most well-known for founding the region’s first air medical transport service, UW Medicine’s Airlift Northwest.
In 1982, using helicopters and planes to bring rural patients to hospitals during emergencies was novel.
For Copass, the idea came, in part, from a tragic house fire in Sitka, Alaska.
The doctor was up north teaching at the time. He tried coordinating trips to get victims of the blaze to Harborview, the nearest burn center, but the right resources weren’t available, according to family and friends who remember the story. Three children died from their injuries.
“Out of that, he said, ‘We need to build a flight service,’” said Dr. Eileen Bulger, a surgeon and Harborview’s chief of trauma, burns and critical care. She’s also a former student and colleague of Copass.
“He said we needed a strategy to support the remote areas of our region that don’t have access to specialty care,” Bulger said. “That’s sort of the founding story of Airlift Northwest.”
The first iteration of the program worked with Harborview’s emergency department to fly critically ill or injured patients from remote parts of southeast Alaska to Seattle. The service eventually started flying patients throughout Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho to the nearest critical care centers.
Airlift Northwest now transports about 4,000 patients a year — and has flown more than 100,000 since its founding, according to UW Medicine.
“We all owe him for the entire system of care that he developed across this region,” Bulger said.
Seattle roots
Copass was born in Seattle on March 30, 1938, and attended Queen Anne High School. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, where he met his future wife, Lucy Ames, and later earned his medical degree from Northwestern University in 1964.
For the next three years, Copass served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps at clinics throughout Germany, eventually earning an Army Commendation Medal for his service, according to an obituary his sister-in-law, Mary Ames, wrote.
By 1969, Copass had returned to the U.S. and started his neurology residency at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He and Ames had welcomed two children, Cloantha and Michael III.
In 1972, the couple’s youngest, Catharine, was born. The next year, Copass was named director of Harborview’s emergency department, a position he held for 35 years.
During that time, Copass was a force under fluorescent lights, a “juggernaut in a sweater vest,” one 2000 Seattle Times article reads.
He arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. every morning, according to former co-workers. By 6:30 a.m., he was checking in with residents, reviewing cases from the night before and offering no shortage of critiques, which he would scribble down on files with a red grease pencil, said Dr. Sam Arbabi, a former student and colleague of Copass, and Harborview’s current director of trauma services.
His temper could flare, Arbabi said, but Copass’ demand for excellence came from a desire to treat every patient with respect and provide them with the best care possible, regardless of who they were.
Arbabi, who met Copass when he was a surgical resident at Harborview in 1992, likened the doctor to the masked hero of Gotham. And if any patients or providers were disrespected, Copass would “descend down” and straighten things out, Arbabi said.
“You’d always think he had a really gruff exterior, but in reality, he was incredibly kind,” said Mitchell, who also led Harborview’s emergency department for years after Copass but knew him as a teenage Seattle Fire Department volunteer, an EMT-in-training and later as a fellow emergency physician. Mitchell is now the medical director of the Washington Medical Coordination Center.
Mitchell has memories of Copass stopping to help residents change bedsheets and sometimes paying to support patients and their families with clothes or hotel rooms.
“I look at him with awe,” Arbabi said.
Turning ambulances into classrooms
Not only was Copass involved in training neurology and surgical residents at the hospital, he also played a significant role in shaping paramedic education programs at the Seattle Fire Department in the mid-1970s.
For nearly 20 years — while Copass was also running the Harborview emergency department, Airlift Northwest and his neurology clinic — he took on the role of the Fire Department’s medical director, too.
“I’ve often wondered” how he did it all, said Dr. Michael Sayre, SFD’s current medical director, who took over after Copass retired.
He excelled at “teaching critical medical skills to firefighters at a time when there wasn’t really a well-established way to provide that training,” Sayre said.
Medic One hit the streets of Seattle in the spring of 1970, introducing the city to an SFD program that trained paramedics to deliver emergency medical care before patients arrived at the hospital.
For the first time, paramedics were learning how to handle cardiac emergencies — Medic One’s co-founder Dr. Leonard Cobb, who died last year, had a background in cardiology — but Copass stepped in to help expand their medical skills. With his help, paramedics learned to provide trauma, obstetrics, pediatric care and more.
“He trained an entire generation of physicians [and other providers] in this region across multiple specialties,” Bulger said.
Even outside the hospital, he was sharing knowledge.
His daughter Catharine Copass, now 51, has fond memories of exploring the city with him and listening to his tales of riding the streetcar from Magnolia to downtown and life during World War II. He knew Seattle so well that as they passed certain intersections or blocks, he would mention the famous EMS rescues that had happened there, she said.
“He was a great storyteller,” his daughter said. “Sort of bringing historic Seattle to life.”
Lasting impact
In 2008, Copass — who was 70 at the time — stepped down from his position as director of Harborview’s emergency department. He continued to see patients at his neurology clinic and help with paramedic training until 2013 when a stroke prompted him to stop working.
Copass moved into Heron’s Key, a Gig Harbor retirement community with skilled nursing services, where he had a “host of very wonderful caregivers,” said Catharine Copass, who lives in Port Angeles with her family.
He held on to his affinity for antique cars in his last several years, she said — a lifelong passion, along with love for Pacific Northwest history and nature, German literature and music (his taste ranged from Bach to the Grateful Dead ), according to sister-in-law Mary Ames.
Copass also loved time with his grandchildren and spent his last years delighting in hearing about their lives, Catharine Copass said.
“We are really proud of what he accomplished,” she said. “It adds some meaning to the sacrifices we all made in sharing him with everyone.”
The region’s health care system continues to feel Copass’ contributions. The ability to quickly move patients between hospitals is essential in Washington, where large bodies of water and mountain ranges can make ground transport difficult from one part of the state to another, said Mitchell.
At the Washington Medical Coordination Center, based at Harborview, Mitchell runs a network between hospitals that finds open beds for patients in need.
“When somebody calls 911 or needs to get to a hospital or needs to get to the right hospital, Dr. Copass is still right in the middle of all of that today,” Mitchell said.
Copass is survived by his wife, Lucy Copass; three children, Cloantha, Michael III and Catharine Copass; four grandchildren, Nicholas, Catharine, Finn and Zephyr; sister Nancy Tiederman; and nieces, nephew and grandnieces and grandnephews.
A public memorial for Copass will be held at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10 , at the Museum of Flight ( 9404 East Marginal Way S. , Seattle ). The Medic One Foundation is asking those who plan to attend to RSVP at mediconefoundation.org to prepare enough seating and catering.
Copass’ family asks that any gifts in his memory be given to the Medic One Foundation ( 11747 N.E. First St., Suite 310, Bellevue, WA 98005) or the Michael K. Copass Fund for Patients and Families at Harborview Medical Center Department of Emergency Medicine ( 850 Republican St., C-5, Box 358045, Seattle, WA 98195).
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