Mahalo, rescuers
On July 26, 2006, my husband, Leonard, made the front page of your paper.
We and my sister and her husband were visiting and decided to take a trip to the volcano. While walking on the lava, Leonard collapsed, and his heart stopped beating, and he stopped breathing. My sister called for help.
Barbara Hanenburg, who was a registered nurse who worked at Hawaii Pacific Oncology Center, and Dr. Chris Hines from Waialua, Oahu, both just happened to be there and started CPR. Rangers Rob Ely and Dave Oren arrived with a recently donated AED, and after three shocks Leonard’s heart started beating again, and he was taken to Hilo Medical Center.
After four days, Leonard was airlifted back to California, transported to the hospital and has a permanent defibrillator implanted in his chest.
He is now 82 years old. So the wonderful personnel who attended to him in Hawaii gave him another busy 16 years of life. He finally decided to retire at the end of 2017, still having some heart problems, but is slowly regaining strength after a recent hospital stay.
Marjorie Nagel
Buena Park, Calif.
Negative ads
The old saying that states if you can’t say anything good about someone, don’t say anything at all, applies very well to the concept of negative political ads.
If they can’t say anything good about their candidate, they say something bad about their candidate’s opponent.
That to me says something about the character of a candidate. Once the negative ads start getting thick, you know there is a lot of money on the candidate whose support is running negative ads, and it’s generally one-sided.
If only the negative ads would end and their PR wonks try to say something positive about their own candidate: “Joe Schmuckatelli, an outstanding mammal!” While it might not sound all that great, it beats calling their candidate a reptilian, which could unfortunately be somewhat closer to the truth.
Don’t just vote, get involved.
Dave Kisor
Pahoa