Bond trader also lands and takes off to help Haiti

Jerry Smith, a bond manager at RBC Financial in Minneapolis, was a few hours into a busy morning on the trading desk when he took the most important call of the day.

On the line was Andy Weisenborn, who had worked with Smith to send medical supplies to Haiti after the earthquake 15 months ago. He told Smith, a veteran pilot, that he was needed immediately.

So began the latest of two dozen humanitarian flights Smith has made to Haiti on his own nickel.

"Good luck and Godspeed," Smith's boss in New York told him March 15, as colleagues in Minneapolis shook hands and said they'd cover for him.

"I was wheels up at 2 p.m.," said Smith, who owns a six-seat, single-engine Piper Malibu.

Smith, 56, a onetime Air Force mechanic who became a six-figure, mortgage-backed securities trader, is one of the thousands of Twin Cities business volunteers who lend a hand or write a check regularly to help others.

His roundtrip flights between Minnesota and Haiti have carried engineers, doctors and others volunteering their time for nonprofits, as well as thousands of pounds of artificial limbs, medical and other supplies.

The mission in mid-March catapulted him into a human rights case.

He flew to Haiti to extract Danny Pye, who with his wife, Leanne, have run orphanages and helped coordinate relief in Jacmel, a town in southern Haiti. Danny Pye had been thrown in jail last year by a Haitian judge on what Pye's supporters contend are trumped-up accusations of financial wrongdoing.

With encouragement of the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, another judge released Pye on St. Patrick's Day. It was a relief to the once-burly Irishman, who had dropped 70 pounds living mostly on water and a flour paste for more than five months in a cramped cell with other prisoners.

Danny Pye left the island in Smith's plane, landing in Florida, where Leanne had traveled a couple of weeks earlier. The next day she gave birth to their second child, a boy.

"Danny Pye is not a criminal," Smith said.

"Danny and Leanne were looking out for the bottom rung ... and it is women and children. His supporters raised holy hell until he was out of jail," Smith said.

Taking risks, giving back

Smith is no stranger to airlifts. In 1975, as a U.S. Air Force mechanic, he jumped aboard refugee-evacuation flights to Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

He has donated bone marrow, recorded "talking books" for the blind for years and flown other medical missions for nonprofits.

"I'm wired to do this kind of thing," Smith quipped. "My wife went with me once. My kids, two in college and one in the Navy SEALs, are proud of me."

"The way we help Haiti is to help educate the kids and raise them out of that voodoo B.S. and show them commitment and they will learn to sustain themselves," Smith said. "The people and the volunteers who do this work are fantastic."

Smith will never forget a 14-year-old boy with epilepsy who was burned badly with cooking oil after his mother was killed in the earthquake. Smith flew him across the island to Port-au-Prince to connect with a commercial flight to Miami for burn treatment.

Smith and his crew at RBC, the Canadian-based financial institution that avoided the mortgage-bond crisis, did well buying bonds at huge discounts during the market chaos of 2008-09, delivering millions in value for the firm and its clients. Smith enjoys the action on the trading floor. But business success is not the endgame.

"I've found that giving of oneself is energizing," Smith said. "And I've found that living on the edge ... for example ... flying across the pitch-black Caribbean sea in the middle of the night ... with 'low fuel' lights on tends to keep one focused and rather energetic!"

Moreover, the long weekends of sorting and hauling supplies and helping homeless people with little to eat had another benefit.