Meeting Their Angel
By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)
Originally published 09:22 a.m., July 12, 2008
Updated 09:22 a.m., July 12, 2008
Becky Ziegler’s a little shy about receiving so much attention for doing what she’s trained to do. But saving a life in a grocery store isn’t something that happens every day, and she wanted for months to get to meet the man whose life she saved. On Thursday, the meeting happened.
Ziegler, a registered nurse, received the Employee of the Quarter award from Stormont-Vail HealthCare as a result of her quick action in applying emergency medical treatment to Rowan Hoeme, who collapsed ahead of her in a checkout line at Reeble’s Country Mart North on Nov. 30.
Two awards are given quarterly to employees “whose job performance and devotion to Stormont-Vail HealthCare customers are exceptional,” according to Tamara Motley, communications specialist for Stormont-Vail. The organization employs more than 3,100 people.
Ziegler, who works at the Medical Arts Clinic, is the first Stormont-Vail employee in Emporia to receive the honor.
“It kind of embarrasses you,” Ziegler said during a recent interview. “I feel like it’s something that everybody else would have done, too.”
Perhaps they would have, if they’d had the training and expertise to know what to do. But Ziegler was in the right place at the right time, and she didn’t stand idle.
She was going up to the check-out line, feeling her way around in a new purse to find her money as she lined up behind a couple who were checking out.
“As I was standing there, he just totally passed out. Fell flat,” Ziegler said. “Scared me to death because he landed right on his head.”
The sound of the man’s head hitting the floor was “just a horrible sound,” she said. “I thought ‘Oh, my God!’”
She immediately kneeled down beside him to see if he was breathing.
“And he was totally blue. I have never seen anybody turn that blue, how fast that can happen,” Ziegler said.
The man’s wife told her that he was diabetic and had taken his insulin, but had not eaten all day.
“I thought in the beginning it was probably his diabetes, so I hollered to somebody to get me some sugar,” she said.
Someone threw her a couple of packets of honey and she tried to bring him around with that.
“He never responded. He moved, like his arms and legs, but he never opened his eyes,” she said. “So then I did do CPR and stayed with him until the ambulance came.”
Ambulance personnel had difficulty drawing blood and getting medical supplies to stick to the man’s skin because of profuse sweating, she said, but soon they put him on a spine board because of the fall, and took him away in an ambulance.
“After the man left, I didn’t know what happened to him,” Ziegler said. “I never knew his name. ...”
Stringent privacy laws about medical information prevented her following up to inquire how the man was.
Later, a card written by the man’s wife arrived in the mail.
“I got the nicest, nicest card from them. ... That meant a lot to me to find out,” she said.
The card said, in part, “It’s hard to find words to express my gratitude to you. I’ve always known there are angels among us. You are one. ... We just wanted you to know how much we appreciate you.”
The card gave the couple’s names — Rowan and Kathy Hoeme — but, like many others, the Hoemes use cell phones and do not have a land-line listing in the telephone book, and Ziegler felt she would be intruding if she went to their apartment and knocked on the door unannounced.
A note left at the Hoemes’ address brought a response and an interview with Kathy Hoeme Tuesday afternoon.
Kathy Hoeme, Rowan’s wife, talked about their wish to meet Ziegler; in the chaos of the incident, she did not get a good look at what she called their guardian angel.
“Everything was fine, and I was just getting ready to hand the cashier the money and I heard this kind of thud,” Hoeme recalled, as she talked about that day in the grocery store. “I turned around and looked and thought, ‘Where did my husband go?’ He was on the floor.”
She described her husband as “completely blue and lifeless.
“They checked his pulse and said, ‘He has no pulse. ... It was just frightening, very frightening,” she said.
Ziegler took over and performed CPR until ambulance personnel arrived to begin treatment and take him to Newman Regional Health, Hoeme said.
Rowan Hoeme now is home from the hospital, repaired with cardiac stents and a defibrillator and still undergoing cardiac care.
“He’s doing very well,” Kathy Hoeme said. “The whole thing was so strange because usually he sits in the car. This time he said, ‘I think I’ll go in with you.’
“If he’d have stayed in the car, I’d have lost him.”
For Ziegler, the meeting Thursday was a humbling experience.
“I always wondered about him and if he had a history of problems, things like that,” Ziegler said. “He told me his sister died at a really young age of heart problems.”
The Hoemes gave Ziegler a snowman angel that says “faith” on one said and “because you take care of my heart” on the other.
“This just gives me goosebumps when I think about it,” Ziegler said. “He told me as this was happening, he ... just had this calmness and this warmness come over his body like he was at peace. Then he said this white light just came. You know, you hear people talking about that.”
In the grocery store, Hoeme did not regain consciousness, though he did begin to show some leg movement, and Ziegler has wondered for months about the extent of his recovery.
“It made me feel good to be able to talk to him and know that he was okay,” Ziegler said. “I was glad to see him looking like he did. He looked healthy.”
Comments
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Posted by rmbcollege (anonymous) on July 12, 2008 at 12:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Great job! It is always nice to know that someone is willing to help someone in need! You did a great job!
Posted by Penny (anonymous) on July 18, 2008 at 5:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Great job! It is so nice to read such an uplifting story. Thanks nurses, for always being "on duty" even at the grocery store!
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