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Info Mountain View 2012 A local resource guide
SEPTEMBER 21, 2012 VOLUME 20, NO. 36
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Man helps two escape fire By Nick Veronin
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Louisa Velazquez, left, prepares to draw “blood” from a replica arm, with help from Jessica Mejia, at Los Altos High School on Sept. 17.
Teens embrace hands-on health care class By Nick Veronin
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bout halfway through class at Los Altos High School, sophomore Chris Styner has nearly immobilized junior Manuel Padilla, working a series of straps over the boy’s chest and around his arms and legs. Teacher Darren Dressen looks on approvingly, giving pointers. “Here, Chris,” Dressen says. “I made the same mistake. You have to do it like this.” Padilla is strapped into what is known as a “spine board” — serving as the guinea pig in one of many exercises taking place around the classroom. The two boys are working on the sports medicine module, one of 10 in Dressen’s health science career class — a new, district-run career-training course on the LASD campus. The teacher bounces from station to station, answering students’ questions
about words they don’t understand and demonstrating procedures, all the while helping the teenagers get a better idea of the sorts of jobs available — and maybe even sparking an interest in pursuing a career in health care. The health science career class is a very hands-on experience, which may help develop students’ interest in the more abstract scientific principles required to become a nurse, a phlebotomist, a pharmacist or an EMT. Across the room, a girl and her partner are fishing around in a fake lung, using a video-camera-equipped endoscope to extract something that was accidentally inhaled. Nearby, two girls have just drawn “blood” from a realistic model of a human arm. And outside, a group of boys use a barbeque lighter to burn different kinds of cloth, recording See HEALTH CARE CLASS, page 9
Good Samaritan climbed a smokey staircase and alerted two residents of a Mountain View apartment complex that the building was ablaze. San Francisco resident Mike Pagan said he believes the last two men to escape the building located at 2260 Wyandotte St. were awakened by his yelling on Saturday evening. “I don’t know what woke them up, whether it was the fire or me yelling,” said Pagan, 43. “But if they hadn’t woken up within a short amount of time, they probably wouldn’t have gotten out.” The two-alarm fire, which was reported at 5:18 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15, burned on the second floor of the complex. It displaced residents of four units and injured the two men helped by Pagan. Two firefighters were injured — not by the fire or smoke inhalation, but through their efforts to battle the blaze, according to Mountain View Fire Department spokeswoman Jaime Garrett. Garrett said that someone did provide assistance to apartment residents before emergency responders arrived at the scene, but she did not know that person’s name. According to Pagan, he arrived at the fire with his daughter, his daughter’s mother — Diana Hendry — and his daughter’s friend shortly before 5:18 p.m. He had been visiting the area to have lunch with his daughter. Pagan quickly asked several people standing outside whether they thought there were more people inside and learned there were likely others still in the building. That’s when Pagan sprang into action,
while Hendry called 911. Although there were people outside the building on their cell phones, Pagan said, Hendry was the first to call emergency officials. Pagan said he first went up one stairwell that was not directly affected by the flames and called out through the smoke. That is when he heard two men stirring in one of the apartments. They sounded caught off guard, he said. He then saw a man poke his head out of the front door of an apartment. Pagan yelled at him, telling him he needed to flee the building. One of the men quickly made it down the stairs, passing through flames and thick smoke to do so. The other man was reluctant, Pagan said. Pagan ran down the stairwell and began walking up another set of steps leading directly into the fire. There he found the second man, who had stumbled coming down the stairs. Pagan helped the man the rest of the way out of the building, emerging though a “rain of ash.” “His skin and his hair and his shoulder were burned,” as the resident passed through flames to escape. According to Garrett, firefighters arrived to find heavy flames coming from the building’s second story, but were able to put the fire out just after 5:30 p.m. The two residents Pagan helped were taken to a hospital with fire-related injuries. The firefighters were treated and released from the hospital later that night, Garrett said. The displaced residents are being helped by the American Red Cross to find temporary housing. V
City accepts portion of Berlin Wall By Daniel DeBolt
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n Tuesday the City Council accepted the donation of the Bay Area’s only sections of the Berlin Wall. The two sections of the wall, weighing 7 tons each, may soon be placed in a conspicuous location in Mountain View such as a public park, thanks to the wishes of German immigrant Frank Golzen, a Los Altos resident who died in 2008 at 92. Golzen had placed them at the site of his first real estate development, the Bayshore
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Business Park in Mountain View at 2685 Marine Way, along with a plaque crediting American economic ideals for its fall. The City Council voted unanimously at its Sept. 18 meeting to accept the donation, spurred by a recent sale of the property by Golzen’s family. The city’s Visual Arts Committee will now take up the question of where to place the pieces and whether to use the plaque written by Golzen. The plaque says: ‘’The world must not forget Continued on page 4
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