Hometown Heroes Award recipients were honored with a medal and plaque for their brave acts.
The Greater Long Beach Chapter of the American Red Cross honored 22 heroic individuals and presented the Outstanding Corporate Hero award to The Boeing Company at its fifth annual Hometown Heroes Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, March 10 at The Hyatt Hotel in Long Beach.
Business leaders, family, friends and members of the community attended to recognize the brave extraordinary acts of individuals who changed someone’s life. LA County Supervisor Don Knabe led the pledge of allegiance and Red Cross volunteer Mat Kaplan, senior director of Technology and Development, CSULB was the emcee.
The Boeing Company was the recipient of the Red Cross’s inaugural Outstanding Corporate Hero award for their substantial support to the organization, active participation in special events and excellent example of partnership in the community.
The Hometown Heroes Award recipients were presented with a medal and plaque for their heroic acts by Greater Long Beach Chapter CEO Nancy Kindelan, Red Cross National Disaster Volunteer of the Year Bill Clausen and Long Beach Fire Battalion Chief Jeff Reeb.
Ten Hometown Heroes stories were honored. One of them was that of Robert Turansick.
Turansick and his wife Pat live in a Long Beach neighborhood called Spinnaker Bay. Late Easter Sunday last year, they were in bed when they heard loud knocking on the front door. Still in his night clothes, Turansick went downstairs. He saw a young woman pacing erratically on his doorstep. “She seemed very intoxicated,” Turansick said. She had been at a party on a nearby boat and told Turansick she wanted to go home but her friends were drunk and not ready to leave. She asked him for a ride.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Turansick said, but he told her to wait on the porch and went upstairs to change. When he and his wife returned, she was gone.
They looked for her and soon heard splashing in the bay. She was babbling incoherently, trying to swim. Turansick ran for a flashlight and cell phone. When he returned, his neighbor had arrived with the key to unlock the dock gate. The three of them tried to pull the young woman up out of the water, but she pulled away and swam underneath the dock. She tried to come up for air between the dock and a boat, but the space was too small for her head. She then tried to swim back under the dock toward the sea wall, but came up floating face down.
Turansick jumped into the water after her and, with the help of his wife and neighbor, was able to get her out of the water. She wasn’t breathing when they laid her on the dock nor during attempts to revive her. Paramedics arrived and were able to get a pulse and transported her to the hospital in critical condition. She died two days later.
Turansick accepts this honor reluctantly because of the outcome. But he realizes the Red Cross mission is important and reminds people to be prepared for emergencies. “I see the familiar Red Cross anytime there is a disaster anywhere in the world and am proud to wholeheartedly support this event,” he said.
Larry Kelly
When his radio crackled with a “Code 2 Medical Emergency in the Beacon Ball Room,” the morning of October 15, 2008, Larry immediately went upstairs to answer the call and arrived to a room in chaos. Hotel convention guest, Ms. Haycock, was having uncontrollable seizures. Her frenzied colleagues surrounded her in a panic because they did not know what to do.
Very calmly, Larry walked over and quickly took control of the situation. Reassuring them that he was professionally trained to deal with this type of emergency, he asked the crowd of onlookers to please step back and give Ms. Haycock space. Via his walkie talkie radio, he asked the hotel switchboard operator to call 9-1-1.
Kneeling by Ms. Haycock, he checked her breathing, laid her on her side, and quietly assured her that help was on the way. He stayed by her side while also maintaining constant communication with the 9-1-1 dispatcher to provide updates on Ms. Haycock’s condition.
“Larry’s calm action caused the tension in the room to quickly subside,” said the convention service manager who was working that day. When the paramedics arrived they complemented him on the professional way he had handled the situation.
Larry Kelly received his First Aid and CPR training from Red Cross years ago and he stays current on his certification. He told us that because he is trained by the Red Cross, he was confident that he was prepared to handle an emergency. He said he “just did what came naturally!”
Sergeant Doug Rangel
On February 2, 2008, Port of Long Beach Harbor Patrol Sergeant Doug Rangel found an unattended car under the west end of the Gerald Desmond Bridge.
Doug was making the preparations to have the car towed when he noticed a note on the car saying: “I am the jumper guy. Have a nice life. Contact my brother at…” with a telephone number to get in touch with the man’s family.
Sergeant Rangel called the Long Beach Police Department and alerted the Harbor Patrol to be on lookout. A distraught man was sitting dangerously close to the edge of the walkway, his legs hanging over it. Sergeant Rangel met the police officer on the bridge. Their hastily formulated plan was that Sergeant Rangel would get the jumper’s attention and distract him with conversation, while the police officer would approach from the rear to grab the would be jumper and pull him off the ledge.
Sergeant Rangel approached the man slowly, attempting to engage him in conversation. The man was distressed and very upset because he had lost his job and was extremely unhappy with how things were going in his life. He said, “It doesn’t matter what you say, I’m going to jump.” As they talked, it became clear that this was not a spur of the moment action; the man had been looking at the bridge for a month with the intention of committing suicide.
While Sergeant Rangel continued to talk, the police officer grabbed from behind. Together, the police officer and Sergeant Rangel wrestled him off the ledge and over to the street section of the bridge.
Sergeant Rangel went above and beyond the call of duty and thereby was instrumental in saving this man’s life.
Linda Rowland
Linda Rowland is a clerk typist at the Long Beach Airport. On Tuesday, November 10, 2008, she was running an errand on her lunch hour to buy coffee for the office at the Costco on Signal Hill. Adjacent to the coffee display, a Costco employee was beginning to set up a product sample station. The employee lost control of the cumbersome metal cart carrying a microwave and several boxes of sample products.
The heavy cart careened across the aisle and into an 87-year-old female shopper, hitting her in the leg above the ankle, and tearing a three-inch gash in her leg. The wound immediately began to bleed profusely.
“I would like to say I just jumped right into action,” Linda said, “but I didn’t throw on my cape and fly over to help. There was a 30-second delay while I waited for someone else to do it. When I finally realized no one else was going to help, I went on automatic pilot.”
Linda has taken an American Red Cross first-aid course as part of her floor warden duties at the airport, so she went right down the list of what she had been trained to do:
1) She told a Costco employee to call 9-1-1
2) She made the victim comfortable, sitting her down next to the big freezers
3) She put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding
4) She focused on calming the anxious woman, telling her everything was going to be alright.
Other shoppers then stepped forward to help. Costco employees provided Linda with gloves to protect her from the blood. While continuing to exert pressure on the wound, Linda kept the woman calm by talking to her and asking her if there was someone she wanted her to call.
When the Signal Hill Fire Department paramedics arrived on the scene they took over, bandaging the wound. They took the elderly women to the hospital for observation and further care.
Adriana Fuentes, Chris Fuentes, Edgar Torres, Nelson Torres, Alex Solano and Julio Martinez
There was a multi-family block party on Georgia Avenue in Paramount for the fourth of July last summer. People were enjoying the celebration when, at about 9:30pm, things suddenly went terribly wrong.
Chris and Adriana Fuentes were with Alex Solano when they heard a screeching sound, saw a white SUV spin out of control, hit a car and then pin an eight-year-old boy against another car. The trio raced to help. Neighbors were banging on his car window shouting: “Back up! Back up!” But the disoriented driver kept hitting the gas pedal.
Chris, Alex and Nelson Torres pulled the intoxicated driver out and put the car in neutral. Then they began to push the SUV back. Adriana, a trained nurse, rushed immediately to the young boy and began to give him CPR. Suddenly, someone else began screaming that they were unable to find their little girl. She was found pinned under the same SUV. Together, 20 men and women surrounded the SUV and began to lift. They were able to lift the front tires onto the curb, creating space enough for the frightened and tearful little girl to be removed.
Police and paramedics arrived soon after and took both children to the hospital. The young boy did not recover, but the young girl was released after being treated for cuts and bruises. Each of these Heroes stresses that the rescue was a team effort and that everyone had to pull together.
Rose Johnson
When Lakewood High School junior Rose Johnson heard a crash outside her home late on the night of May 19, 2008, she thought it was a plane crash and feared for her life.
She ran to the window to investigate and saw that a car had crashed into a tree and was steaming. A motorist had crashed into a bus stop pole and then the tree in front of her house on Lakewood Boulevard near Del Amo. The driver was obviously inebriated and, after he had hit the tree, he stayed in his car. “I saw his eyes were glazed,” Rose said.
She rushed out of her house so quickly she forgot to put on shoes and immediately went to assist the driver. Her adrenaline was pumping and she was so focused on pulling the dazed driver out that she did not notice there was glass surrounding the car, cutting her feet badly.
She grabbed the intoxicated driver, put his arms around her neck, pulled him from the steaming car and then sat him on a bus stop bench. Within seconds, the car started smoking and sparking.
Rose and other bystanders attempted to call 9-1-1 but had difficulty getting a call out on their cell phones. Luckily, police arrived only moments after Rose had pulled the man out of the car. They were already in pursuit of his car because he had been involved in a hit-and-run accident just minutes before and had followed the skid marks to the second crash.
After the man and his car had been taken away, Rose and her neighbors swept the street of any glass and other debris because they were concerned that other cars might be damaged.
Deborah Hansen
While vacationing on Catalina Island last May, American Airlines flight attendant Deborah Hansen went for a morning power walk in the misty rain.
When she saw a helicopter arriving from the mainland coming in for a landing at an awkward angle, she was certain it was going to crash. “I just started running,” Deborah said. She was confident she could help. Deborah ran toward the crash, scaling a six-foot chain link fence, just as the helicopter went down in a huge explosion a few feet short of the landing area. Flames erupted immediately and debris flew everywhere. Some of the passengers were thrown from the aircraft.
Amidst the smoke and flames, Deborah saw that there were two people who were beyond saving, but there were still three people that she knew could be helped. “I knew I had to help the survivors get out quickly before the flames spread,” she said.
One woman began to crawl backwards out of the helicopter to escape the flames. Seeing that she was safe, Deborah went to assist a man who was still inside the helicopter. He told her that his legs were broken and that he couldn’t stand.
Deborah told him “I’m going to pull you anyway or you are going to burn up in these flames!” She put his arms around her neck and dragged him 12 feet to safety.
“The ambulances arrived within seconds, it seemed,” she said. Four victims were pulled from the burning plane. Unfortunately, the pilot later perished from his injuries. Authorities attribute Deborah’s quick action to the survival of three passengers.
Deborah says her training and experience were the keys to having the confidence to help.
Charles Song
When he was a young boy in Cambodia, Charles Song was gravely wounded by Khmer Rouge soldiers, and his life was saved by a Red Cross nurse. It is no wonder that he has a special place in his heart for the Red Cross mission. He is also a member of the Red Cross Board of Directors and is trained in both first aid and CPR.
On August 12, 2008, Charles and his family were enjoying brunch when his wife looked at him in distress. Suddenly, she collapsed. Frightened, Charles rushed to check her breathing. Forcing himself to stay calm, he asked his friend who owned the restaurant to call 9-1-1.
Although he was concerned that his CPR certificate had expired, he said, “I thought to myself: I must do this; it’s my wife.” Carefully, he began to perform CPR.
He had completed three cycles of CPR and rescue breaths when he heard his wife gasp for air. She opened her eyes and asked Charles what had happened. With relief, he told her she had collapsed.
When the paramedics arrived, they took over. Mrs. Song was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital, where she later stabilized. One of the paramedics told Charles that his quick actions no doubt saved his wife’s life.
Charles takes saving lives very seriously. Following the devastation caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he worked tirelessly in the local Cambodian community giving Together We Prepare disaster preparedness presentations in Khmer to more than 300 people.
Bill & Judy Webster and the crew of The Sidekick
On August 1, 2008, Dr. Bill and Judy Webster were sailing The Sidekick in the 36th Annual Santa Barbara to King Harbor Race, making record time.
Meanwhile, the Rattle & Hum, another team in the race, were suddenly hit by powerful gust of wind that sent crew member Judy-Rae Karlsen tumbling into the water. Underwater, her ankle tangled in the ropes and Judy was unable to breathe. She freed herself, but was no longer tied to the boat. Dazed, without safety gear, she was alone in the water.
By coincidence, Bill Webster had tuned his VHF radio to channel 16 to check the weather report. Suddenly, the Rattle & Hum’s captain broke into the report shouting, “Mayday, woman overboard and we can’t get back to her.” As she provided Judy’s location, Bill realized The Sidekick was close and told the crew to watch for her.
The crew immediately spotted Judy. Operating in a state of “managed chaos,” one crew member kept his eyes on Judy while others dropped a sail to stop the boat. Despite heavy seas and changing winds, they steered closer to her on their second try.
Her waterlogged clothes and the bouncing boat made it impossible to lift her. She began to slip out of the life sling and submerged below the water. On their next attempt, they tied Judy to a line and winched her aboard. The crew said: “We didn’t win the race, but it was the most successful race we have ever run!”
Judy said: “I am alive and safe today because of the crew on The
Sidekick.”
