When Manuel and Cristina Andres of Arcadia heard emergency appeal for medical help from Argentina on ham radio, they found and sent equipment that saved a life.
LOS ANGELES TIMES (ARCADIA) — A young man in Argentina owes his life to a couple here who happened to be listening to their ham radio at the right time.
It was Friday afternoon when Manuel and Cristina Andres heard ham radio operator Enrique Rivas transmitting an urgent message for two doctors in Mendoza, Argentina.
The doctors desperately needed a tube and valve necessary to perform a brain operation on a 22-year-old man who had been in an automobile accident year earlier and who now had developed acute complications.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Andres understood the message because they are Argentine natives.
Andres, whose hobby has long been ham radios, cut in on the broadcast, explaining that his wife is a nurse and possibly the equipment could be located in California.
Mrs. Andres, a former employee of Community Hospital of San Gabriel, immediately went into action.
She called the hospital and talked with Mrs. Catherine Willey, nursing supervisor, who referred her to Dr. William Caton and Dr. Davind Maline, neuro-surgeons on the hospital staff who use the equipment in their practice.
Mrs. Andres said she reached Caton about 9 p.m., five hours after she and her husband had heard the broadcast.
Caton ok’d the tube and valve to be released by nurse Fran Daly, assistant supervisor of the operating room.
“She was asleep at home,” Mrs. Andres said. “But she got up, met me at the hospital and gave me the equipment.”
The next morning Mrs. Andres took the tube and valve to Los Angeles International Airport and persuaded the captain of an Argentine Airlines plane flying to Buenos Aires to deliver the needed equipment personally.
After arriving in Buenos Aires, the captain was met by the pilot of another airliner going on to Mendoza. There, the two Argentine doctors were waiting when the plane touched down.
“It all happened in less than 24 hours,” Mrs. Andres said.
She said she and her husband learned by ham radio that the surgery was performed immediately and successfully.
The family of the patient wired $124 as payment for the equipment.
Mrs. Andres said the couple check on the young man’s condition from time to time.
“He’s doing fine,” she said. “His name is Horacio, and although I’ve talked with his mother I still don’t know his last name.”
About the couple’s heroic deed, Mrs. Andres said, “We just happened to hear a message that was being sent to save a life. As a nurse, I knew how vital that message was. But all the people at the hospital really deserve the credit.”
Mrs. Andres said neither she nor her husband is normally home at 4 p.m. but that she had just given birth to a baby and he is on strike from his job as an electronic engineer for the American Broadcasting Co.
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