Charlotte Hobson’s dad lovingly describes the precocious second-grader as something of a busybody.
What her father Jim Hobson calls “nosiness,” the Southwest Washington Chapter of the American Red Cross calls heroic.
Charlotte, a then-first grade student at Daybreak Primary School in Battle Ground, was eating lunch one day in April when she noticed something amiss with one of her schoolmates. Timothy Lyashevskiy, also a first-grader, rushed out of the lunch room, which is against the school’s rules.
“His eyes were getting watery,” Charlotte said in a video produced — and featured — for the Red Cross’ 14th annual Real Heroes Breakfast. “His face was getting a little red.”
Charlotte scurried to Lynette Wooldridge, the cafeteria monitor, to let her know something was wrong with Timothy. Wooldridge found the boy choking in a bathroom and performed abdominal thrusts until a mouthful of hamburger was jarred free from his throat.
Charlotte and Wooldridge were among the nine Clark County residents and one German shepherd honored for their life-saving efforts during the Friday event inside a Hilton Vancouver Washington banquet hall.
A crowd of more than 600 people made the annual fundraiser the local Red Cross chapter’s most well-attended to date.
The event detailed local life-saving moments, and shined a light on the importance of blood donations as emergency officials around the world rushed to treat victims of an earthquake and tsunami that struck Thursday night and Friday morning, hitting hard Japan and Hawaii.
Crowned with medals and handed trophies, the honorees were employees, law enforcement officials, a child and an animal. The heroes honored at the breakfast were:
• Connie Shearer, a registered nurse for Southwest Washington Agency on Aging and Disability, was making a routine visit to the home of Virginia, an elderly patient bound to a motorized wheelchair and round-the-clock oxygen. Virginia, whose last name was not given, noticed a large oxygen tank in her sewing room was leaking and alerted Shearer. Static electricity caused the oxygen to ignite, flames quickly engulfing the room.
“I just kicked into my nurse’s mode,” Shearer said in the video.
She wheeled Virginia out of her duplex unit. Then, at Virginia’s urging, rushed into the adjacent unit an evacuated another oxygen-dependent woman.
Oxygen tanks in both units exploded. “If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be here today,” Virginia said of Connie.
• Ryan Michael is a 911 dispatcher for Clark Regional Emergency Management Agency. It’s often a thankless job, he said. Callers in desperate situations often curse at him and are difficult to keep focused.
He was on the phone for eight minutes helping a woman whose 15-year-old special needs son was choking and unable to breathe.
Michael knew paramedics were delayed on another call so he detailed to the woman how to perform abdominal thrusts on her son. Eventually, a rubber bouncy ball broke loose and the boy started breathing on his own again. “I had to keep them on task,” Michael said.
• It was a sunny afternoon of softball at Roy Morse Park in Longview when Eric Bergquist, a firefighter/EMT, and Miranda Brown, a nurse’s assistant, sprang into action. A player collapsed coming off the field and the pair performed CPR until firefighters arrived with an automatic external defibrillator to normalize the man’s heart beat.
“I was really honored to be able to do something like that,” Brown said.
• Tiffani Pekkala suffers from an immune deficiency disease that makes her easily susceptible to illness. The Freedom Hays High School student relies on daily immunoglobulin injections, a product made up of blood provided by Red Cross donors.
With help from her grandmother, Betty-Jo Poser, Tiffani organized blood drives at Liberty Middle School and Hayes Freedom. Ninety people donated blood.
The drive was so successful Tiffani plans on making it an annual event.
“Someday you might be the one who needs blood,” Tiffani said.
• La Center police Sgt. Jerry Lester and Senior Officer Rowdy Berry knew they were in for a new experience when they were dispatched to a call to provide AED assistance.
Called on to back up firefighters already responding to an emergency, the two men rushed to a home with a steep driveway to find Damien Christian slumped in the passenger side of his vehicle undergoing cardiac arrest.
The two cops used the machine for the first time on a real-life subject and restored Christian’s heart rhythm.
“How do you say thanks to the guys who saved your life?” Christian said in the video, relishing more time with his wife Tina and son Ayden.
“When the patient took that first breath, I got real excited,” Berry said.
• Staring into the eyes of barking and flaming dog sounds like an image from a nightmare.
For Ed Arthur and his family, it was salvation.
The family’s German shepherd Sid ran through their home’s burning living room and barked in the rooms of teen Seth and twins Mason and Madeline until they woke.
They all made it out safely. “I would not have woke up if it wasn’t for him barking at me,” Seth Jolly said.
Sid suffered serious burns and lung damage. The 9-year-old yelped a bit as the entire family walked to the front of the hall to share in their dog’s honor.
Heroes Award Winners
• Education Rescue: Charlotte Hobson and Lynette Wooldridge
• Adult Good Samaritan: Eric Bergquist and Miranda Brown
• Law Enforcement: Sgt. Jerry Lester and Senior Officer Rowdy Berry
• Animal Rescue: Sid
• Professional Rescue: Ryan Michael
• Workplace Rescue: Connie Shearer
• Blood Hero: Tiffani Pekkala
