Courage, selfless acts and service to community were to be recognized Thursday at the American Red Cross Snohomish County Chapter’s Real Heroes Breakfast.
Honorees and awards include:
Kaiden Porter-Foy: fire rescue
A 17-year-old Lake Stevens High School student didn’t hesitate to run toward danger to save a woman from a fire last summer. It was late on Aug. 7, or very early Aug. 8, when Kaiden Porter-Foy heard popping sounds. Looking outside, he saw that his neighbor’s mobile home was glowing. He woke his grandparents, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt and boots, then ran toward the blaze.
In a Herald story, the teen described looking through his neighbor’s window and seeing the woman. She was holding a gas can. After kicking down the back door, he grabbed the can and threw it way. It exploded. He fought to carry the 54-year-old woman — against her will — out of the mobile home. He took her to the Lake Stevens home where he lives with his grandparents, then returned to the burning structure. As fire engulfed the place, he couldn’t re-enter to make sure no one else was inside.
“He doesn’t talk about it too much. He has nightmares that he gets in and can’t get out,” said Melody Mulneaux-Thomas, Kaiden’s grandmother and guardian. She said that Kaiden’s mother, Leslie Foy, will be at the breakfast to see him honored.
“He’s been recognized throughout his whole life for little acts of kindness,” Mulneaux-Thomas said. “Sometimes people kind of panic and stand back. He’s quick-thinking and quick-acting — not that I want him running into burning buildings.”
Megan Lucas and Tracy Franke: commitment to community
Megan Lucas, now a counselor at Darrington Elementary School, helped first responders with bereavement after the Oso landslide in 2014. Then working for Providence Hospice and Home Care of Snohomish County, she was contacted by Darrington Elementary School Principal Tracy Franke. The principal was seeking classroom support and a way for students to express their feelings related to the tragedy that claimed 43 lives.
After that initial work, Lucas was hired to stay on at the school with funds provided by the American Red Cross, the Cascade Valley Hospital Foundation, United Way of Snohomish County and North Counties Family Services.
“We adapted the program Art with Heart to reach every student in the classroom setting. It’s a counseling curriculum,” Franke said. Lucas and Franke said many Darrington students had been touched by complex trauma — related to poverty, divorce, substance abuse in families and other issues — in addition to the slide.
Art with Heart, Lucas said, has been a way “for teachers to get to know what our students are dealing with on a daily basis.” Art with Heart books have given children a place to put their feelings, and the program has helped them see they aren’t alone, the counselor said. Lucas said Darrington’s students, school staff and the whole community “are still dealing with the repercussions of this major tragedy.”
Christine Walker: CPR rescue
Mike Walker was about to leave his Lake Stevens home for a Labor Day camping trip when he suffered a cardiac event. The plan, on Aug. 28, 2014, was for Walker to go alone to the camping spot for a little quiet time. Son Ron, daughter-in-law Christine and 2-year-old grandson Scott were to join him later. They live with Walker.
“I had stayed home from work that Thursday. My son was sick,” Christine Walker said. Her father-in-law had come downstairs to see how Scott was feeling. Christine briefly left the room.
“When I came back, my father-in-law wasn’t breathing,” she said. “I knew something was wrong. I picked up my son, ran him to his room, put him in his crib and said ‘I love you.’ I called 911 on my way back.”
Reporting her fear that her father-in-law had suffered a heart attack, she was told to get him on the floor and start cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She had been trained in CPR but wasn’t sure of current practices. The dispatcher told her to do chest compressions. “She made me count out loud the whole time,” Christine Walker said.
Today, 60-year-old Mike Walker said he is “doing really well.” He had heart bypass surgery in 1999. He works at the Monroe Correctional Complex. He is so grateful for Christine’s lifesaving actions, he nominated her for a Real Heroes award. “I could have been up there camping, with nobody to help,” he said.
Jose and Chelsea Ramos: Good Samaritans
Jose and Chelsea Ramos, who live in the Smokey Point area, were driving on Highway 9 near Bryant one Saturday last winter. With their five children, they were looking for a house to rent. Jose Ramos saw a car in the ditch. When he passed it, he noticed something red — someone was trying to get out of the car. They turned back and found Motoko “Kitty” Johnson, who is in her 80s. She didn’t appear hurt but was wet, cold, confused and needing help.
The couple called a tow truck and police. Johnson didn’t want to go to a hospital. After warming her in their car and trying to find a rental car for her, they ended up taking Johnson to her rural Arlington home.
After church the next day, they decided to go check on Johnson. No one answered her door, so they called for help. A Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy entered her home and found her unresponsive on the floor, Jose Ramos said. At Cascade Valley Hospital and Clinics, it was found that she had suffered a brain bleed, a type of stroke.
Nancy Cox, Johnson’s longtime neighbor, said her friend is now staying at a care facility in Snohomish and has largely recovered. “They saved her life, the Ramoses. They were Good Samaritans,” Cox said.
Matt Keller: water rescue
It was Jan. 20, no day for swimming at Lake Ki. Larry Jackson set out in a 12-foot aluminum boat to look for a missing dock. When he stood up in the boat to move seats, the 68-year-old soon knew he was in trouble.
“The front end went straight up and the corner went down in the water, and that was the point of no return,” Jackson told The Herald last January. About 100 feet from shore, he was clinging to the capsized boat when he was spotted by his neighbor, Matt Keller, an Everett Fire Department battalion chief.
Keller trains in water rescues. But in January at his Lake Ki home, the only life-saving vessel that was handy was a wooden kayak. Keller grabbed life jackets, a rope and a paddle, and rushed to the struggling man. He threw Jackson a life jacket and rope, then paddled to shore. Jackson was so chilled, he couldn’t pull himself up the ladder onto his dock. Keller pulled him up and helped Jackson get to his house — and into a warm shower — while Jackson’s wife, Sheryl, made a hot drink.
A day after the rescue, the Jacksons brought Keller homemade cookies and a thank-you note that called the firefighter “my true guardian angel.”
Toby Albright: first aid
Mill Creek’s Toby Albright was headed to a Seahawks game about a year ago when he saw trouble at an intersection. Traffic was backed up and debris was in the road along 132nd Street SE, near Penny Creek Elementary School.
“Something told me to pull over,” said Albright, a 41-year-old longshoreman who works at the Port of Seattle. A woman riding a Sym motor scooter had been struck by an older Suburban SUV. She was on the ground. “I could see her leg was bad,” said Albright, describing how he saw blood and bone.
Katie Postlewait, now 51, had just left the nearby Advent Lutheran Church, where her husband is pastor. Albright said another woman stopped, and he asked her to call 911 and describe the serious injury. “We had tied a handkerchief, a tourniquet, around her leg,” he said. Worried that the victim was falling asleep, he said, “I kept her alert until the ambulance got there.”
The Rev. Scott Postlewait said his wife was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She has had 11 surgeries since her femoral artery was severed, and her femur, tibia and fibula were crushed in the accident. “She is lucky to be alive,” said Scott Postlewait, adding that their church community has been wonderfully supportive.
Albright made it to the Hawks game but said “I just couldn’t shake that.” In June, he stopped at the church and met Katie. She had not lost her leg, as he had feared. He wants people to understand the importance of first-aid training and fast action.
Travis Hots: spirit of service
As fire chief for Snohomish County Fire Districts 21 and 22 — Arlington Rural Fire &Rescue and the Getchell Fire Department — Travis Hots stepped up to new demands in the aftermath of the Oso mudslide that took 43 lives.
A Herald story published nearly a year after the March 22, 2014, mudslide, described how Hots “was for a time the face and voice of the tragedy.” A firefighter’s son who grew up in Marysville, Hots became a somber yet familiar face in twice-a-day briefings for reporters in the week after the disaster. After that first day, when he set up a command post from his car, he faced reporters and TV cameras to answer hard questions about the search and the numbers of missing.
A firefighter since his teens, he worked in Marysville and at Lake Goodwin and Lake Stevens. The chief at the Getchell station since 1999, he is a pilot with the county Helicopter Rescue Team.
Senior Services of Snohomish County’s Minor Home Repair: Clare Waite Award
Nearly 300 local homes now have smoke detectors thanks to the work of Senior Services of Snohomish County’s Minor Home Repair program. In partnership with the Red Cross Home Fire Preparedness Campaign, the agency installed smoke alarms in homes of low-income seniors and people with disabilities.
The Minor Home Repair Program, with Dale Miller as director, is being honored with the Red Cross’ Clare Waite Award. Waite, who died in 2011, was a longtime Red Cross employee who administered the Project Pride energy assistance program in Snohomish County.
Miller said the agency’s free and low-cost repair jobs are intended to help people stay safely in their own homes. Along with installing smoke alarms, work includes shower conversions, plumbing repairs, and fixing windows and doors. Juli Rose, the Minor Home Repair program coordinator, said that so far this year 929 clients have been helped by the repair program. “It makes a huge difference,” she said.
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