Anna Mae Ericksen, born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, on November 1, 1919, became an influential nurse and humanitarian whose career centered on Spokane. After graduating from Rogers High School in 1939, she and her sister Modelle enrolled in the Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in May 1940. Commissioned into the United States Army Nurse Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant in October 1943, she served at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, caring for returning and wounded veterans before health problems from rheumatic fever led to her reassignment to Fort George Wright Army Station; she was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and honorably discharged in 1946. She then returned to Deaconess Hospital, where she worked in the Admitting Department and secured approval to create the hospital's first Emergency Room by retrofitting a janitor's supply closet on the first floor. Believing the Sheriff's Office should not be transporting victims to the hospital, she joined other healthcare leaders in launching Spokane's first ambulance service. As head nurse of the Emergency Department from 1955 to 1957, she worked with local physicians to establish the Spokane Poison Center, and under her leadership the Mr. Yuk poison center program began serving the greater Spokane area in 1975 and later became a national program. From 1957 to 1970 she was Superior of the Deaconess Emergency Outpatient Department and the Poison Information Center, and in 1970 she became Assistant Director of Nursing for those departments. Beginning in the late 1960s, she helped organize the Emergency Department Nurses Association, founded the Inland Empire Emergency Department Nurses Association, served as president of the national EDNA organization in 1975, sat on the Governor's ad hoc committee on emergency medicine, and that same year was one of 26 people to speak at the White House on Emergency Medical Services issues. She also served for 20 years on the East Regional Medical Services and Trauma Council, worked with outlying fire departments to develop training for EMTs and paramedics, organized the first Rural Nurses Conferences in 1984, and became a founding member of the Rural Nurses Organization in 1989. She retired from Deaconess in 1987 after more than 40 years of service, later received the Ann Magnuson Award from the American Red Cross in 1991, the Hall of Fame Award from the National Emergency Nurses Association in 1999, and induction into the Washington State Nurses Hall of Fame in 2010. She died on March 5, 2016, at age 95.