In 2020, during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, healthcare professionals across Kansas City were pushed beyond their limits. Many caregivers facing trauma, emergency response fatigue, and burnout were not receiving the support they needed. Among them was Karla Pérez Solórzano, an Emergency Medical Technician at The University of Kansas Health System. Witnessing the emotional and physical toll on her colleagues, she helped launch the Emergency Department Wellness Committee to provide relief through livestreams, Monday Motivation posts, wellness challenges, and a Wellness Cart filled with encouragement. With support from the Emergency Department Manager, gift cards were secured for massages, floating sensory deprivation therapy, and facials. These gestures offered comfort, yet they reached only a few. The need was greater, and the vision needed room to grow.

In 2021, Karla founded Healing Heroic Healers Inc. 501 c 3 to expand wellness support beyond one hospital and serve frontline healthcare workers across Kansas City. What started as an internal initiative began evolving into a community movement grounded in healing, humanity, and restoration.

By Spring 2023, Healing Heroic Healers launched holistic wellness care packages, individualized support, and the Wellness Cohort Program designed for high performing frontline professionals seeking stress relief, balance, and growth. Community CPR classes were also developed during this period, with plans to integrate virtual reality for immersive hands on training.

In 2024, storytelling became a new pathway for healing. Healing Heroic Healers H3³ produced Answering the Call A Healer’s Journey, a docu series shaped by lived experience and inspired by Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. The series highlights the first responders of Kansas City through intimate storytelling that brings forward real EMS 911 responders, EMTs, firefighters, and frontline healthcare workers. Produced by Kylen Lindesay with Director of Photography Lexie Logue, each episode reveals courage, grief, strength, and the emotional labor that is often carried quietly and alone.

As Luis Ortega reminds us, “The stories we tell can build an empathetic, inclusive and equitable world.”

Stories became medicine. Visibility became validation. Healing became communal.

Today, what began with one wellness cart in one emergency department has grown into a movement fueled by care, creativity, and community. Healing Heroic Healers continues to expand wellness programs, storytelling projects, and healing centered initiatives focused on nervous system recovery, whole person wellness, and sustaining the people who care for others every day.

Healing Heroic Healers exists to give back to frontline healthcare workers by providing natural and holistic care that helps them refresh, refuel, and rebalance. Healing is not only about surviving the work. Healing is about restoring the person who carries it.