Northern Arizona VA Health Care System
NAVAHCS Employees Serving in the Military
Chrystina Rutter and her husband Lt Col Mark Rutter, retired
Captain Tina Palone serves in the 944th Medical Squadron at Luke Air Force Base. At Northern Arizona VA Health Care System (NAVAHCS), Tina is an RN serving as a case manager for Transition care Management Program (TCM) formerly OEF/OIF/OND Program. In both jobs she is honored to work and serve our Nation’s Heroes.
Tina grew up as the only girl with four brothers. Her father served as a Marine during the Korean War and her brothers served in the Army and Navy. She joined the Air Force as a Nurse.
Tina was nominated as the Commissioned Grade Officer (CGO) of the year for the wing. She was already selected as the CGO of the Quarter for her unit. She not only serves as a Nurse with her unit but she is also the Officer in charge (OIC) of Education and Training to ensure 15 nurse and 60 Medical Techs have the right training to deploy. With the help of the Noncommissioned Officer OIC (NCOIC) they created a half million dollar medical readiness training room. The room has aided her unit in providing joint exercises with the Phoenix VA, other medical units on base as well as the Army, Marines and Navy.
Tina volunteered to deploy to Shaw Air Force base’s Medical Clinic. In the short time she was there, she revamped the Suicide Prevention Plan as well as supported the Summer Sports Activity in which more than 3,000 airmen were treated.
Captain Chrystina Rutter serves in the 944th Aeromedical Staging Squadron at Luke Air Force Base. At NAVAHCS, Chrystina is a Human Resources Staffing Supervisor. In this position she oversees the staffing and placement of employees. She manages the team who brings on new employees and retains the current staff at the facility. The team consists of 12 individuals – 5 specialist, 5 assistants and 2 Technical Career Field (TCF) interns.
Chrystina has one older brother who served in the Army and she knew she wanted to join the military. During her career in the Air Force she had the opportunity to live in places like Japan, Germany and England before returning stateside and filling roles such as: State Level - Recruiter, Retention Manager; Headquarters Level at the Pentagon - Healthcare Professional Program Manager and Legislative Liaison working directly on Capitol Hill fighting for important legislation affecting Airmen. After spending six years at the Headquarters Level she was offered a direct commission as a Flight Commander for the 113 DCANG Medical Group. Upon completion of that assignment she was transferred to the 944th Aeromedical Staging Squadron where she is the Chief of Medical Readiness. In this role she is responsible for managing the administrative processing and staging, providing limited medical care of casualties entering or transiting the system.
Additionally, she is responsible for ensuring that the unit is ready and prepared to respond to both natural and man-made disasters in support of homeland security. This requires cross agency coordination with local law enforcement, hospitals, the VA hospital, TSA, Homeland Security and other military units.
In the summer of 2016 she was asked to fill a leadership role – coordinating the placement of personnel and resources during a Humanitarian Deployment mission on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai – Tropic Care 2016. During this event, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security partnered with the local communities on the Island to set up mobile healthcare clinics around the island and provided over 22,000 procedures ranging from dental, optometry and basic medical triage at no cost to the public. Tropic Care 2016 was considered the DoD’s large stateside humanitarian accomplishment to date.
Most recently the unit conducted a training exercise where patients were evacuated from Glendale Arizona to an undisclosed location using aircraft transport out of Sky Harbor Airport. Due to the success of both the Tropic Care mission and this exercise she was awarded the CGO award for the 3rd Quarter of FY2016 and nominated for the annual CGO award.
Both of these NAVAHCS employees are accomplishing their duties at the VA at in their Air Force Units with great pride, care and concern. NAVAHCS and the Veterans it serves are lucky to have these two employees as well as all the employees who go above and beyond each and every day to provide outstanding care to our Veterans.
