A soldier ended up performing a top secret mission all on his own in order to surprise his wife by arriving home from his deployment early.
Sgt. 1st Class Jason Johnson waited behind a curtain at the emergency department of Salem Health hospital in Salem, Oregon.
Still wearing his army camouflage, Jason was there for one reason only – to surprise his wife Sandi, an ER nurse.
Sgt. 1st Class Jason Johnson returned early from his overseas deployment to surprise his wife
Jason gave his wife, an emergency room nurse at Salem Hospital, quite the anniversary gift
The heartwarming homecoming was captured on video by Dan Johnson, Jason’s brother, and posted March 6 on Salem Health’s Facebook page
With a little help from Sandi’s co-workers and Jason’s fellow soldiers the operation to return home was seamless as he gave his wife the wonderful surprise.
Jason is a flight medic and platoon sergeant for Golf Company, 1st Battalion, 189th Aviation Regiment, which conducts medical evacuations, search and rescues using HH-60M Blackhawk helicopters.
He has been in the Oregon National Guard for 26 year and has been on four deployments overseas. He said the most recent include operations in Syria, Iraq and Kuwait.
The reunion was all caught on video by hospital staff and posted to Salem Health’s Facebook page.
The surprise happened on January 7, the date of the couple’s one-year wedding anniversary
Laying the groundwork for the surprise was a monumental task for Jason but from the look on his wife Sandi’s face, left, it was all worth it
The heartwarming homecoming was made all-the-more special because it was the couple’s one-year anniversary.
The big reveal was planned for 5am – just before the end of Sandi’s overnight shift.
She had no idea what was happening behind her back as the plans all fell into place.
‘Part of my timing was making sure that her replacements would be there and she would be able to go home afterward,’ Jason said to KING5.
While the charge nurse kept her distracted, another colleague prepped the exam room, while another brought Jason into the ER without her noticing.
Sandi Johnson was surprised to find her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Jason Johnson behind the curtain of one of the exam rooms in the emergency department at Salem Hospital
The pair hugged tightly having not seen each other since April 2017. Other staff nurses cried
The reunion was planned for the end of the shift so that the pair could go back home together and make up for all the time they had been apart
Then, as if following up on a patient in the ward, Sandi received a call for some additional help from her colleague. Little did she know that it was for a very special patient indeed.
‘I foamed up to wash my hands for patient contact,’ Sandi said, ‘and there was my husband instead.’
‘Happy anniversary!’ he said as she came around the curtain Sandi smiled and fell into his arms.
‘I was in total shock,’ she said. She was not expecting him home for another month.
Although she didn’t cry in the moment, other nurses began to well up as they saw the love and emotion the couple felt for one another.
‘As I was walking by everyone, they saw me in uniform and knew what was happening, and everyone in the ER started crying,’ he said. ‘It was pretty neat to see how moved everyone else was.’
Johnson was deployed to the Middle East with Golf Company, 1st Battalion, 189th Aviation Regiment, the medevac helicopter unit based in Salem