A 43-year-old Gillette police officer is in a Billings hospital's intensive-care unit recovering from 14 hours of emergency cardiac surgery, his future uncertain.
Eight weeks ago, he was in a Denver hospital with his 28-year-old wife of four months as she went through emergency spinal surgery.
She’s still recovering. And she lost her job.
Life for Ben and Kara Hoang and their blended family of five children has turned upside down.
“Rewind eight weeks, the tables were turned and he felt helpless,” Kara Hoang said. “Well, now, here I am, feeling helpless because I want to take this pain from him. I don’t want him going through this.”
Ben Hoang, a K-9 officer for Gillette Police Department, told Kara this past Wednesday he was going to the department to work out.
He has been her primary source of support since they traveled to a Denver hospital in mid-August to talk to specialists about issues in her back that were rapidly deteriorating.
She was in an accident in 2022. Compression of her spinal cord was getting worse and impacting movement and body functions.
That doctor’s office visit led to emergency surgery the next day, a week in the hospital, and continued recovery. She remains under strict movement restrictions and cannot bend, twist or lift anything.
During her hospital stay, Kara posted a tribute on social media to her husband who “never left my side.”
“You loved me when I couldn’t be independent, when I felt broken, when I was scared and you reminded me that I didn’t have to be strong every second because you would be strong for me when I couldn’t,” she wrote. “You showed me exactly what ‘in sickness and in health means.’”
Then last Wednesday, Ben called her from the police department gym and told her he had chest pain that initially went away and then returned, shooting down into his stomach.
He told her that colleagues were telling him to go to the hospital.
Aortic Dissection
She told him to head to the emergency room. A CT scan showed he had a major thoracic aortic dissection — a tear in the wall of the aorta, the body’s main artery.
Campbell County Memorial Hospital called for a LifeFlight from University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. But a storm in Denver prevented that team from flying.
The couple was then told that the hospital had contacted a team in Billings and that if Ben didn’t get surgery as soon as possible, he could die.
Kara said she flew with her husband to Billings and was met at the hospital door by the surgical team. Ben was taken into the operating room and did not come out for hours.
A nurse told Kara that the surgical team could not get his heart and lungs to function again without the operating room’s heart-lung machine.
“I’m by myself in the middle of the night for 14 hours and then all of a sudden that is the news I get,” she said. “And then about five to 10 minutes later that same nurse comes out … and had a smile on her face this time, and she says they were able go get him off.
"I’ve never prayed more in my life.”
Ben was left in a medically induced coma because swelling from his heart prevented the surgeons from initially closing his chest cavity. They were able to do that the next day.
Kara said her husband then developed pneumonia. He remains in the ICU but has been taken off the ventilator.
'Generous Heart”
Ben Hoang’s mother, Teri Dearcorn, who was at the hospital in support of the couple, characterizes her son as someone who has “the kindest, most loving, generous heart of anyone I know.”
“We just thank God that he is still here with us,” she said. “My dad, his grandfather, my dad’s sister, which is Ben’s great aunt, both of them passed away from the same thing. So, it’s a hereditary thing.”
The American Heart Association’s website states that an aortic dissection is a sudden tear in the inner layer of the aorta that can occur with little warning.
Dearcorn and Kara Hoang said they believe the fact Ben remains alive is a miracle.
“The surgeon who literally saved his life said, ‘For one, he’s lucky he didn’t just go home and wait this out,’ because a lot of people do that,” Kara said.
Dearcorn said her son graduated from Campbell County High School and enlisted in the Marines after 9/11. He served four tours of duty in Iraq as an aircraft-rescue firefighter.
After the military, Ben Hoang served eight years as a detention officer with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office and the past nine years as an officer with the city police department.
A Gillette Police Department social media post in July recognized Hoang and his K-9 partner, Macho, for being the top overall narcotics and K-9 team at the Wyoming Police Service Dog Association’s annual training and certification.
A friend of the family has organized a GoFundMe to help the family with lost income, travel, medical, and other expenses that come with raising five children.
Help With Macho
Kara said members of the K-9 team also have been helping care for Macho during her husband’s hospitalization.
“He wants to help people, that’s just who he is,” Kara said. “He has a long road of recovery ahead of him.”
Both women say Ben Hoang’s prognosis remains uncertain. Kara said that when her husband returns home, he will probably need a much more “stress-free life.”
Dearcorn said they are “hoping” he will be able to continue with the police department, but nothing is certain “at this point.”
She said the family appreciates the community’s support and the response from many across Wyoming.
“It’s the not the first time we have experienced their kindness and love,” Dearcorn said. “I am just so grateful for that.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
