``These are highly trained, highly skilled, highly dedicated people,'' said Dr. James Holsinger, chancellor of the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center.

Traditionally, medical helicopter crews have backgrounds in intensive care, critical care and trauma care.

Zellers, 43, was a nurse with more than 20 years of experience with UK Hospital, said spokeswoman Mary Margaret Colliver. She worked in the neonatal intensive-care unit when she joined the hospital in 1985, and later as a staff nurse in the emergency department. She became a flight nurse in 1991.

Zellers lived in Elizabethtown with her husband, Jeffrey Zellers, a psychiatrist who has a practice there. She had four sons, ages 3, 5, 7 and 24.

Harden, 31, lived in Richmond and started work with the Madison County Emergency Medical Service. In 1992 he joined the Georgetown Scott County Emergency Medical Service, and became a paramedic supervisor.

He joined CareFlight, the helicopter medical service operated by St. Joseph Hospital, in 1994. However, he was also on call to the UK service since last year, and had been called in to work Monday, Colliver said.

Katy Roe, a former neighbor of Harden on Bramble Court in Nicholasville, said he was a good neighbor.

``He was very friendly, he would just come out and talk,'' she said. ``You couldn't ask for better neighbors.''

He was married to Patricia Elliston Harden and had two daughters, ages 5 and 2, according to birth records.

The two pilots who died in Monday's crash, Jones of the Cleveland area and Lexington area resident Green, were longtime employees, said Daphne Babin, director of public relations for Petroleum Helicopters Inc., which owned the craft.

``Both of them had been with us for quite a while,'' she said. ``They were very experienced, highly skilled, trained pilots.''

Pilots who can put the craft down on a dime are critical to the team's success, Holsinger said.

``While the pilots don't actually work for UK ... they are part of the team. ... There's tremendous esprit de corps. They get tremendous satisfaction, do a tremendous service, but at a significant risk,'' Holsinger said yesterday.

Before the crews prepare for active duty again, they want to know what went wrong in Breathitt County.

``Our flight crew wants to know, `What was cause of the accident?' They'll feel a lot better when they know,'' said Holsinger, who used to ferry Vietnam-era medevacs.

In interviews last year when UK announced the addition of a second helicopter that would be based in Jackson during the day, chief flight nurse Colleen Swartz said the primary reason for the addition was to get to patients faster.

``We can be within 20 minutes of just about any referral,'' Swartz said.

During the peak trauma season between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the crew might make five to seven flights a day. Ten minutes after another hospital calls for a transfer flight, they are on their way. And they land wherever there is available space; for instance, in Morehead that means the football field.

They can handle most things an emergency-room doctor might handle, including restarting hearts.