Christopher Tino, or Mr. Tino to his previous students like me, has been devoted to Respiratory Care for over 51 years and is still going strong! Beginning in his early 20s Mr. Tino worked as a staff therapist for several years, “in the wild” as he calls it. He taught 3+ years in New Jersey before coming to Luzerne County Community College where he has been teaching for over 42 years and is the Program Director. Somewhere in there he found time for home care and has lots of fun stories about that too. I’m told he was the President of the PSRC at some point in all this though I’m not sure how he found the time! He was also a District Director with PSRC. I wanted to run some numbers to try to figure out how many patients Mr. Tino has potentially helped by teaching respiratory students to becoming respiratory therapists over the last 45 years. If he graduated an average of 12 students per year for 45 years that would be 540 graduates. If these graduates, see an average of 6 patients per workday that’s 3240 patients per workday a student he taught is seeing. If these students work 4 days per week for 50 weeks out of the year that’s 648,000 patients in a year that Mr. Tino has helped by teaching their Respiratory Therapist, the basics and then some. With those numbers alone, I had to nominate Mr. Tino for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Tino volunteered with countless respiratory organizations, but one very dear to him was Camp Asthma Cadabra, a weekend overnight camp for kids with asthma to be able to experience camping despite their illness. Mr. Tino not only volunteered as a Respiratory Therapist at the camp that needed to be staffed 24/7 with medical workers but also helped raise the funds necessary to sponsor children to attend the camp. Mr. Tino has worked through health issues and illness and never let anything get in his way of making sure his students are equipped with everything they need to be prepared for their career. He is the Program Director, an instructor, at times a counselor, an ear or a shoulder, an advice giver, a joke teller, and a true asset to the field of Respiratory.