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Nurse Riley - Ukraine Trip Return From November 4th, 2025 · The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Uh, we have in the studio where us Riley Taate
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Riley was with us. How long ago, Riley? How long year?
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It was a month ago? Maybe a little more than
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: a month.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it was longer than that was that you
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: were here.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: It all blurs together for me, but I think it
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: was longer.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It was a year. I don't think it was long.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: But at any rate, Riley at the time, he is
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: a nurse. And uh at that time, you had signed
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: up to be a volunteer in Ukraine through what an
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: organization is it?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I went with a nonprofit called Global Care Force.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Global Care Force and uh, so, tell me first of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: all about your nursing background. How long have you been
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a nurse?
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Before I say anything, I guess I need to dobe
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Dan YAKSPRAVI, good morning, how are you?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: That is the only Ukrainian I learned while I was
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: over there.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. That's more than I know.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: One more time then yuxpavi and they told me I
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: sound Italian when I.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: So, what how long have you been a nurse?
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I've been a nurse for over two years.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I work in a unit called interventional Radiology and I'm
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: a sedation nurse.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, you're a pretty pretty safe job, just kind
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of routine rights.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Safe job that has its adrenaline field in moments.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: But so you decided to volunteer with this group and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: go to Ukraine. Why why did you want to do that?
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I get asked that a lot, and even when I
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: was going through customs in the Netherlands, they're like, why
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: are you going to Ukraine. I'm not sure I can
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: give you a good answer other than I wanted to
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: help as best I could.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Their story inspires me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: There's something about Ukraine and like standing up for freedom.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: They're like this little guy that wants to be free.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: They want to speak their own language, they want to
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: have their own culture. They don't want the tyrants in
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Moscow to tell them what to do. And to me,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: that feels deeply American, feels deeply in Utah, and.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I don't want the tyrants in Utah to tell me
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: about nobody does, or the tyrants in Washington, DC. So
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: you went with a team to Ukraine. Just what did
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you find there? What was it like?
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I'll try to paint you a picture. The team was
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: four Americans, myself included me, a nurse. A nurse practitioner
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: and a medical doctor, and we had a team of
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: six Ukrainians as interpreters and we flew flew into Poland
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: and then from Poland we'll take a train into Ukraine.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Fourteen hour train ride. It was brutal and you have
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: to go through all these military checkpoints and it's pretty
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: nerve racking in the beginning, and it takes literally three
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: days from Utah to get to Kiev. Kiv is the
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: capital of Ukraine. From Kiv, we then drove eight hours
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: south to the city of Mikoliv. Nikolaiv is a large city.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: It's about twice the size of Salt Lake on the
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: It basically feeds into the Black Sea and it's a shipbuilding.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So it's on the coast of the Black Sea.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Well it's on a river that goes into the Black Sea,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: so that they don't.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: Even part of what Russia wants.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: During the Soviet times, it was one of their major
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: shipbuilding ports, so it's strategically important. From Mikolai, we set
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: up like we had a hotel there and we sort
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: us a base camp there and each day we would
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: drive our two hours into these little rural towns that
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: used to be occupied by Russia and to also kind
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: of set up the context here at eighty percent of
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: all providers in Ukraine are gone. Their medical doctors, their physicians,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: all the higher ups.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: What do you mean go.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: They have either left the country because they are super
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: underpaid or they are serving on the front line. So
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: the major cities are understaffed, which means the rural towns
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: have no one.
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: And it's not just dealing with the effects of the war.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: People need regular healthcare there like that all doesn't stop
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: because the war's going on.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: What kind of thing? What kind of things were you
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: dealing with?
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: So we weren't like doing war wounds or assisting on
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: like treating soldiers. We were helping the It was an
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: older population in these rural towns that have chronic illnesses, hypertension, diabetes,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: they all have PTSD.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: They're all shell shops.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Did you see a lot of damage.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Ukraine. I'd want to preface this that Ukraine
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: is beautiful. The architecture, the cities, the landscape. It almost
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: kind of feels like Utah, Like I feel like I
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: was in rural Utah. Sometimes it's beautiful, beautiful, farmland, lush,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: and then you there's this you look at the buildings
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: and they're bombed out and the windows are gone and
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: all the and there's potholes everywhere. And we drove through
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: miles and miles of mine fields.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Did you have now you didn't? Did you see any
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: any fighting or anything like that?
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: We experienced air raids daily and nightly. I guess we
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: were there during like a major offensive. Russia was trying
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: to knock out Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Their plan is to
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: demoralize Ukraine, knock out their power, knock out their water,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: just make life miserable for the citizens.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that they just go, okay, they just give up.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Just fine, we give up. But what what? What were
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the people like in terms of resisting the Soviets. They
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: are the mostru It's the Russians they want to be
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the Soviets.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're the most stoic, strong willed people that I
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: have ever met. They will not let you know they
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: are in pain. But then you get down and you
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: look at them eye to eye and you can see
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: the tiredness, you can see the insomnia, you can see
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: the pain building. But they won't let you know that.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: They are so stoic, so strong, They're not going to surrender.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: We're talking to Riley Tait, who was a nurse from
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: here in Salt Lake who volunteered to go to Ukraine
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: for several weeks and help out over there. Says, here,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: you saw three hundred and fifty one patients correct, all
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: but forty six were return patients to the clinics. What
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: does that mean?
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: So we basically are treating they A team will go
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: every two months and supply these towns with their medications,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: give them a supply for a couple of months, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: we're kind of retreating the same people coming back to
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: get their to treat their chronic illnesses. And we had
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: forty one new people to our clinics.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So forty one and then you'll say to them somebody
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: will be back in an X amount of time.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Too, hopefully.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: People continue to volunteer and continue to help us support Ukraine.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: Now you say volunteer, did they pay to take you?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: How does that work?
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: No? I I covered my own expenses to get yeah,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: and then I raised sixty five hundred dollars. I'm so proud.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: I can't believe I raised thousands of dollars to go
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: and do this. It's I thank you everyone who listened
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: and contributed. I made more money on this show than
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: I did anything else.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Oh right, because I was in here when you were here.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Now it had a fun. Oh okay.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: So anybody that volunteers, they just have to come up
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: with their own way to pay to go.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: You you'll cover your own flight to get to Ukraine,
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: and you'll raise the money to cover our medical expenses
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: and logistics.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And wow, once you're in Ukraine.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: The Ukrainians took care of us first class trade that
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: they I gained weight while I was in war.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I feel very guilty about that.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I understand. The food is quite good.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: It's it's very meat and potatoes, very borsh and and verneki.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: I'm going to pronounce it wrong with these like little dumplings.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: They're amazing.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Had you ever had before? I have not.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I loved it. It's beats, it's it's delicious.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: You have you had the like the war the hot
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: soup boards hot? Yeah, it was war, potatoes in it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and cracks. There's a cold borsh too that I don't.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: Care for, but it's delicious. But they also have McDonald's.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: They also have Chinese restaurants. They're just like us the same.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Kieva is I just I've always wanted to see that.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: What I mean, it's an historic, beautiful historic city with
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: lots of art and architecture, and.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: It's so beautiful.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: I don't think it knows what it wants to be
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: because it's very East European. It's got all this Russian
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: architecture and then it also has this Western European vibe.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there. There are city, I mean a kind
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of uh in, there are cities in Russia. What was
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the first city we went to in Russia? Saint Petersburg. Yeah,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg. It's it's it's Russian and yet it's also European.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that old school Russian architecture, but also the
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: new stuff.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh and uh so did you make Are you
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: going to go back.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent of going back? I don't know how
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I'll do.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: It might be a little later than I would want,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: but I'm going to get back there.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: So you'll have to raise money for that again.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I got it maybe. And also I took
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of time off for work. I don't want
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: to lose my job.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Well, they like they they they do you work for
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: what Who do you work for?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I worent for Inner Mountain Health.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they say, okay, you can go.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: They were fantastic and I give him a shout out
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: last time, and I got to shout them out again.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: We are the best ir unit in the state. And
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: thank you so much. Guys, which one do you work at?
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I work both at IMC in Murray and the LDS Hospital.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: Okay, Well, when you're ready to put another trip together,
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: come back and well, I'm sure our friends of the
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: program will step up and help.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: You do that. Yeah. Help, that's great and that The
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: name of the organization again.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Is Global Care Force.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: If you're in the medical field, I think they even
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: take people not part of the medical field. But if
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: you want an adventure, you want to help, you want
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: to do what you can. I highly recommend it. It's
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: an experience you won't forget.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And if you want a long train ride.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: The travel times are the downside, but it's worth it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Why did it take Why does it take three days?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Is that because what you fly directly from Salt Lake
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to where?
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: So?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: What was your flight?
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Where'd you go?
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: I flew into Berlin and then Berlin I went Warsaw,
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: and then Warsaw, I go into Krakou. Krakau is in
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Poland and it's the nearest city. It's the border like
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: basically closest to Ukraine. And then you have to clear
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: like basically you know, the European Union customs. So you
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: got to take Polish train and then you gotta get
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: on a Ukrainian train and then it's a lot of
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: customs into Ukraine.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: And as a I.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Was kind of a high risk person because I'm a
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: military aged man. And it is true the stories that
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: they can pull you off the street and draft you.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Oh so there was a chance that maybe they just
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: conscribe it.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Just can script me to the Ukrainian which I thought
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: about doing. Actually, honestly, I kept my passport on me
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: at all times.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: What an adventure And you did, You did good work
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, traveled to provided ten thousand
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: dollars in free medications to people three hundred and fifty
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: one patients and that and you worked in ten different
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: small villages in Ukraine.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Tract.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Congratulations, what's what a great thing to do and and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: you are to be commended.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. I do want to tell just like
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: one quick story. I think it just tells you how
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: amazing the Ukrainians are when you have an error. We
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: were there when in Kiev the first night there was
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: a cruise, missiles and drones attack the city and the
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: alarms are blaring, and you get this app on your
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: phone and it's from the government and it's an air
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: raid alert system. And if you choose the English version,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Mark Hamill tells you to seek shelter. Really and he
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: quotes Star Wars. He's your over confidence will be your weakness.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Get to shelter. And then once the air alert's over,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: he comes on. He goes, the air alert is over,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: May the Force be with you. And it's so jarring
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: because it's.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Luke Skywalker, for.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: God's pretty amazing. That's that's that's great. Thank you for
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: sharing with us. And and if you want to go again,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: come back here and we'll help you raise some money.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Riley.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: I'll call you