Saving lives one night at a time

Dr. Keith Garner, who travels from Arizona to Iowa every week to work in Le Mars' emergency room, has been around the nation working, drag racing and big game hunting. He says he returns to Iowa week after week because of the people. [Click to enlarge]

Keith Garner, once retired, has an interesting nightlife.

He saves people's lives.

Garner isn't a caped crusader or masked marvel, but when the M.D. slips on his white jacket and steps into Floyd Valley Hospital's emergency room, he becomes a man of action.

That probably isn't so surprising coming from someone who earned national drag racing titles and shot a 9-foot polar bear.

"It's an adrenaline thing," the doctor said, explaining why he likes working the E.R. "Someone comes in and Bam! I have to make a decision right now. I like the challenge."

Garner couldn't give that challenge up. After working in Cherokee for 18 years, he moved to Arizona and tried retiring, but that lasted a month. Now he's an E.R. doctor by contract, and he hops a flight every week to come to Le Mars, pulling the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift in the E.R. He spends nights at a house he owns in Cherokee and flies home for weekends in Arizona with his wife Jolyn.

This is his eighth year making the trek.

"It's very rewarding as a physician to care for Iowa people," he said. "I come back to Iowa because I like Iowa people."

But Garner's own roots are not Iowan.

A native of the East Coast, he was pulled west by medical school to California.

He remembers his peers playing chess during their off-time.

Garner wanted something different.

"That was back in the days of American racing. There were three kinds of guys: car guys, motorcycle guys and surfers," Garner said. "I was a car guy."

He started working in a garage, then got a job driving a car -- his first step toward stock drag racing.

"Then I bought my Cobra and started racing," he said. "My son Greg is a genius mechanic. We made a great team."

The duo started locally and then raced nationally under the name "Witch Doctors." Garner's ability to make quick E.R. decisions translated to smart racing behind the wheel of their Oldsmobile Starfire 4-speed.

And Garner has the national trophies to prove it.

A drag racing doctor? Garner has always been somewhat of a rebel.

He grew up with a father who was a Christian minister, but as a teen Garner wanted nothing to do with his dad's faith.

"God didn't let me do anything I wanted to do," Garner remembered. "I turned my back on my father and God and left home at 16."

He became agnostic, believing that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.

Later, when Garner became a doctor, several ministers paid him a visit and tried to tell him about their faith.

He threw one out of his office and told another he would call the police if he didn't leave.

But another minister paid him a visit and gave him a challenge: tell God he didn't believe in him.

Garner decided he'd better take the minister up on that. The skeptic spoke an unusual prayer.

"I said, 'God, just in case I'm wrong, tell me. I want a sign. I'm a doctor, I deal with signs: blood pressure, temperature,'" Garner remembered. Suddenly, he said, he was physically smacked to the ground.

"I picked up a Bible, and the first text I read was Isaiah 6, where an angel brings a piece of coal to the prophet Isaiah's lips and says his sins are forgiven," Garner said. "Then Isaiah hears God ask who he can send to bring his message to people. Isaiah says, 'Send me.'"

With that, Garner's life turned a new corner.

"I said, 'OK God, I give up,' and I became a Christian," Garner said.

From then on, his main aim was to live that decision out.

"To me the secret of being a Christian is not just going to church on Sunday," he said. "The idea of being a Christian is doing God's work, dedicating your life to God. I believe that's the key not only to success, but to peace that surpasses understanding."

So, for Garner, that also meant dedicating his work as an E.R. doctor to God.

"When a call comes in, the first thing I say is, 'OK, God help me,'" he said.

That sets the tone.

Then his mind clicks into gear, finding out the situation so he knows what orders to give.

"I start making decisions before the patient gets to the hospital," he said. "Then the second the ambulance comes to the door, I immediately go to the patient."

While he hasn't been on the racetrack for a few years, Garner is still making snap decisions.

But now he takes his work in the E.R. beyond that.

He prays for the people he treats, and even sends them get-well cards later.

"I want people to know I care," he said.