"He was the guy who seemed to have everything figured out," his friend Patrick Accorsi says. "He was quiet but confident. The rest of us were all over the place, no idea what we were doing our lives. But with Mickey, you always knew he'd be OK."
The accident
The evening of Sept. 27 was cold and rainy. In Waldorf, two teenage girls were driving a 2003 Ford Taurus on a wet road when the car hydroplaned, crossed a median, bounced off several trees and struck another car. Response crews arrived on the scene, and soon the state police medevac helicopter - Trooper 2 - was dispatched from its hangar at Andrews Air Force Base.
On board for the rescue was Mickey Lippy.
Lippy, 34, spent four years as an Anne Arundel County firefighter before joining the state police in 2004. Three years later, he was promoted to his dream job, a medic aboard police medical helicopters.
He had recently returned to work from family leave. His wife, Chrissy, had given birth to a baby girl. Madison was only 4 months old when Mickey boarded Trooper 2 and set out for Charles County.
Lippy helped load the two girls into the helicopter, and then Trooper 2 - with Lippy, the victims, a pilot and an emergency medical technician on board - took off. The trip should not have been long. The crash site was just 50 miles from Prince George's Hospital.
Conditions, though, rapidly deteriorated. Rain became heavy, and fog grew thick. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, within an hour, visibility decreased from seven miles to four and the cloud ceiling dropped from 1,300 feet to just 500 feet.
Rerouted to Andrews Air Force Base, the pilot was still having trouble assessing his surroundings. He radioed once more, asking for assistance. Not long after, though, the radio went silent.
It took search crews nearly two hours to find the helicopter. It was a crumbled mess. Trooper 2 crashed into a heavily wooded hillside, just short of the base. Four of the five occupants died, including Lippy.
Always there
Sports appeal to us for different reasons. Some play for the adrenaline rush and some for the competition. Others have a need to belong, and still others search for purpose in their lives. For Mickey Lippy, sports mattered because they cut to the heart of what he loved the most about life: having someone's back.
When Bruce Lippy closes his eyes, he sees a young boy on the porch, lacrosse stick in hand, waiting for his dad to come home.
