Michal Luzon has spent the past two years rushing toward emergencies. As a volunteer EMT with Magen David Adom, she’s trained to stay calm under pressure, treat the injured, and to move on to the next call. But a few weeks ago, everything changed when she became the one who needed help.
When her eight-year-old son, Itai, was hit by a car while riding his bicycle near home in Even Yehuda in central Israel, a neighbor called Luzon from the scene of the accident and urged her to come quickly. Luzon grabbed her MDA bag, got in the car, and tried to stay level-headed.
“I thought it was something relatively minor,” she recalled. “But when I got close and saw the MDA teams from a distance, I immediately understood this was a very serious head injury. I saw Itai lying on the road in a pool of blood, bleeding from his nose, his mouth, his ears.”
The first responder already crouched over her son was Roy Gimpowitz, an MDA EMT, and someone Luzon knew well from their shared volunteer work.
“The moment I saw Roy, I felt a little calmer,” she says. “I know him. I know the kind of professional he is. I trusted him completely.”
Roy worked quickly, delivering lifesaving first aid, controlling the bleeding, and stabilizing Itai’s condition. Within minutes, MDA paramedic Orian Lukatz arrived and joined the effort, and for Luzon, her presence brought a different kind of relief.
“I started crying when Orian got there,” remembered Luzon. “I told her, ‘This is my son.’ And she just held me and kept me calm the whole time.”
Itai was rushed to the hospital in serious condition, sedated and on a ventilator. The injuries he sustained were severe.
Today, he is in rehabilitation, growing stronger with each passing day. Gimpowitz and Lukatz came to pay Itai and his mother a visit.
Gimpowitz remembers the call as one that caught him off guard. “When I arrived, I saw a child with a very severe head injury after being hit by a car. I began advanced treatment right away, stopping the bleeding and stabilizing his condition. It was only mid-treatment that I realized his mother was an MDA volunteer I knew personally,” he reflected. “Seeing Itai recover, and getting to visit him afterward, that’s something I won’t forget.”
For Lukatz, the call struck close to home for a different reason. “As an MDA staff member, it’s always scary to think about the possibility of being on the other side,” she said. “When I arrived and saw Michal, I felt a wave of distress. I had trained her in the medic course, so I know her well. I understood that I had to pull myself together and be there for her. The days that followed were hard. But watching Itai keep recovering, that is truly moving.”
“As far as Itai is concerned,” said Luzon tearfully at the reunion, “Roy and Orian are the people who saved his life.”
