Recent graduate to leave for cross-country trip to promote group

What started six months ago as a trip home has developed into an adventure that 2005 IU graduate Christy Mehrlich never expected.\nAll she knew was she wanted to see some historical sites, but more importantly to spread awareness about Angel flight, a volunteer-based group that organizes flights for people who need to go to different emergency locations.\n“So if there is a really nice children’s hospital two states away, Angel Flight contacts pilots and asks them to fly patients to that hospital,” Mehrlich said.\nAs a spokesperson for Angel Flight, Mehrlich hopes to raise more attention for the group and possibly raise some funds.\nStarting in May, Mehrlich will be heading from Bloomington to California, but before she does so, she will make other trips.\nMehrlich, who is a pilot and a native of California, will be flying her own plane to 40 states in a five-month span. \nShe will be spending at least three days in each spot she visits. She will fly and land her plane, and then dedicate the remainder of the day to reaching the place she will stay overnight, whether it is a hostel, bed and breakfast or a cheap motel, she said. \nAfter departing from Bloomington on May 2, the first stop on Mehrlich’s schedule is Kent State University in Ohio, where she will be meeting with a group of students to discuss the memorial of the May 4 shooting which occurred in 1970 when the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd, killing four Kent State students and wounding nine others. \nMehrlich said the students she will meet with will be commemorating the event, and she will be attending the annual vigil as well. \nMehrlich said her father used to be involved in an organization that later merged with Angel Flight, which is how she started working for the organization. Now as a sponsor, Mehrlich said Angel Flight is helping her on the trip with support for her endeavor. In return, she’ll help raise awareness for the organization. \nMehrlich also plans to dig up fossils in North Dakota, see endangered species in the Florida Everglades, go spelunking in Alabama and visit Wounded Knee in South Dakota. \n“I’m pretty excited about going to Washington D.C. for over a week,” Mehrlich added. While there, she hopes to visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum along with the Arlington National Cemetery. Merhlich said that when she was younger she previously visited the cemetery, but she is looking forward to seeing it again.\n“There are a lot of things when you are a kid that you don’t understand the gravity of,” she said. “Now that I am older, I have a greater respect.”\nBob Burke, owner of BMG Aviation, said that Angel Flight recently flew in a woman from Michigan who was undergoing cancer treatment at the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institution in Bloomington. \nBurke said that BMG airport gives fuel donations to Angel Flight pilots.\nMehrlich has been flying since 2003, when she got her pilot’s license. With her majors in business and journalism, Mehrlich said she hopes she can incorporate writing into her upcoming adventure.\n“My plan is to put a book together about the travels at the end of five months, so I’m excited about getting out there to interview and talk to people,” Mehrlich said.\nMehrlich will be alone in her flights, but she admits she is not nervous, just anticipating the trip. She said she is overwhelmed with planning for the trip, but looking forward to the places that await her.\n “It’s not like a regular trip that I am going to digest on my own,” Mehrlich said. “I am really going to be proactive in finding out people’s opinions about activities they are doing and how they perceive what I am doing from \ntheir perspectives.”