Galleria cSalon
A COMPLETE BEAUTY CENTER
Josie Rodriguez invites her
customers & friends to her
new location
Page 16
The Battalion
Thursday, November 17,1988
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Woman receives 'gift
from dying neighbor, friend
CHICAGO (AP) — They were
neighbors, schoolmates and
friends. But between them, they
had one sound heart.
“The first thing that went
through my mind is that a friend
of mine is dead,” 18-year-old
Maria Ortiz said Wednesday
from her bed at the University of
Illinois-Chicago Hospital, where
she is recovering from heart
transplant surgery after receiving
a surprise gift — the heart of a
high-school friend.
“Now I’ve got a chance . . . and
I’ll be real happy because I know
the girl and I know most likely
how she was and I’ll feel better
than having a stranger’s heart in
me,” she said.
Ortiz lived all her life with a
/weakening heart muscle.
After an attack Nov. 6, she was
brought to the intensive care unit
at Illinois Masonic Hospital,
where doctors feared she had
only a few days left.
Ortiz began trying to accept
that she might never get to see
her 4-month-old daughter grow
up.
In a waiting room nearby, her
mother, Carmen Geliga, struck
up a conversation with another
woman whose daughter was in
the same unit with a neurological
disorder that had left her brain
dead, but with a healthy heart.
Geliga had no idea then that
their daughters had exchanged
greetings at the neighborhood
pool and talked occasionally in
the halls at Roberto Clemente
High School before Maria
dropped out.
“I wanted to ask her, but I
couldn’t, because it seemed very
cruel to come out and say, ‘Please,
give us her heart,”’ Geliga re
called.
Instead, she went home and
prayed.
When she returned to the hos
pital, Geliga learned the woman
had asked to speak with her.
“I had sorrow for her because
she was losing her daughter and
it’s hard to accept because her
daughter was leaving and mine
was going on me also. . . . Then
she just says to me, ‘I want to do
nate my daughter’s heart so that
your daughter can go on living.’”
Both girls were moved to the
University of Illinois Hospital,
but neither Ortiz nor her motht
knew the donor was a friend uni
other friends of the two teen-aj
ers made the connection.
Doctors have pronounced it
transplanted heart “an excellei
match,” and say Ortiz’ chanta
for survival are promising.
Candace Wiberg, organ
curement coordinator at the k
pital, said doctors bypassedasa
protocol for chosing a recipiei
from among all eligible patiem
because the donor’s motht
“likely wouldn’t have donated
unless she knew Maria wouldji
it.”
Ortiz says she has occasioi
bouts of sadness over her friendi
fate, and promises one of herfirs)
trips when she returns homem
be to visit her friend’s mother.
Police officer makes use of toys
for auto accident investigations
FREEPORT (AP) — When the finer points of
his occupational specialty require further study,
Police Of ficer Paul Leach opens the box of metal
toy cars and begins to play.
“I know it looks childish,” Leach said, laugh
ing. “My kids say ‘Daddy, can we play with them
when you’re done?”’
Through their juvenile exterior, the mite-sized
vehicles illustrate a growing trend in law enforce
ment of which Leach, 37, recently became a part.
With two hefty handfuls of equipment that in
clude a calculator, plumb bob, video camera and
his Matchbox racers, Leach is able to reconstruct
the scene of an automobile accident. It is an un
loved art form that takes a good amount of phys
ics and detective work to do right, he said.
“It’s boring and brings lots of complaints,
that’s why people don’t like it,” Leach said. “I
love math.”
Though some Department of Public Safety
troopers have similar training and all city officers
learn the basics, Police Chief Charles Bankston
said Leach is the only one in southern Brazoria
County certified as an accident reconstructionist.
“He’s good at it,” Bankston said. “He’s studied
it hard.”
He added that it was an aspect of police work
expected to become more important in the fu
ture.
“Accidents have become so complicated these
days,” Bankston said. “Somebody needs to know
how to do it.”
To gain his certification, Leach took 140 hours
of investigation classes and did well enough to be
invited to the advanced school at Texas A&M
University along with about 20 others from
across the state, he said.
It was an opportunity the city’s traffic enforce
ment officer couldn’t refuse, one he has worked
toward since he began in the profession 13 years
ago.
Leach said he would talk with longtime state
patrolmen, who utilized car damage, skidmarks,
momentum, drag factors and rotational energy
in their investigations.
“You started finding out there may be more to
an accident than meets the eye,” he said. “Its
combination of all these things that makeittidj
Learning the basics of the subject piqued
interest.
“I got the bug,” Leach said. “I thoughth
was an opportunity to better myself.”
He has since traveled back to College Stal
for lessons on braking systems and crush
surements.
On an accident investigation scene, hewiilnoi
mally arrive with about $ 1,800 in equipment!
Leach purchased all of it himself, as a wayofpi
paring for possible future work for an attoi
or as a teacher outside of law enforcement.
Leach said answers to some accidents can
arrived at to a near degree, the results of a
where even the shards of a broken headlii
studied in a laboratory can help solve the puzzle
The toys are used to play with different see
narios. By tying the back wheels or pushingtk
cars down a wooden ramp, Leach said it beam
easier to get a feel for what really might ha«
happened during a crash.
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