By Andrea Schoellkopf
Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
Copyright 2006 Albuquerque Journal
Carl N. Garcia was supposed to be looking after his two greatnephews last week as he finished moving into his new Ladera home he shares with his sister.
But the boys, ages 9 and 4, ended up looking after him shortly after he reached into a moving box and severed an artery on a broken piece of ceramic.
As he watched blood spurt in two or three directions from his right forearm, he called out to Alex Garcia, 9, who was watching cartoons in the living room with his brother, Chris.
Alex — an avid fan of rescue shows on the Discovery and Health channels — called his mother, Jamie, at work and then called 9-1-1.
“I got scared,” said Garcia, who asked his nephew to bring him a towel so they could wrap the wound. From the garage door — avoiding the white carpet, white walls and white throw rugs decorating his new home — he directed Alex to get the key to unlock the front iron security door and read the address off the new home while Chris found the telephone.
“I (didn’t) want to dirty (my sister’s) living room,” Garcia said.
A copy of the 9-1-1 tape recorded Alex, an incoming fourth-grader at Susie Rayos Marmon Elementary, calmly telling the emergency dispatcher that his uncle had cut his arm and that he also had diabetes.
“My uncle hurt himself and he’s bleeding pretty bad,” he said on the call.
The 9-1-1 operators sent the call over to the Albuquerque Fire Department, which has emergency dispatchers trained in evaluating the severity of a medical call, which in this case was not determined at that point to be life-threatening, a department spokesman said.
Ramon Gallego, a firefighter who is also trained as an emergency medical dispatcher, instructed Alex to apply pressure to the wound to staunch the flow until paramedics arrived about four minutes later to the home in the 6000 block of Staubach NW.
When Gallego asked to speak with the elder Garcia, the 9-year-old had to instruct his uncle — who was losing consciousness — on what to say.
“I was dizzy,” said Garcia, a retired janitor with Lee Galles automotive. "(The dispatcher) asked me where I had cut myself.”
Added Alex: “I told him to say he had cut his wrist.”
Alex had told Chris to stay in the living room, but the 4-year-old — who starts kindergarten in a few weeks and typically doesn’t listen to his brother — was fascinated by all the blood, which had hit the drywall in the open garage and sprayed outside onto the driveway.
Jamie Garcia, a North Valley hairdresser who had left a client in the middle of a cut to race to her in-laws’ home, arrived just before the paramedics. Their father, Carl A. Garcia, joined her for the trip to Presbyterian Hospital as the boys were left with another grandparent.
“I saw the inside (tendons and artery) of his hand,” said the nephew, a zoning inspector for the city of Albuquerque, describing how a male nurse held onto an artery and occasionally let the blood flow into the hand, pinkening the gray skin.
Carl N. Garcia required surgery to reattach the artery and tendon, and that took about three hours, his family said. They praised doctors there for saving his hand, which could have been lost or unusable.
A spokesman for the Albuquerque Fire Department said it’s not unusual to take calls from children, and the dispatchers are trained to get the information from them they need to determine the severity of the call.
“It’s probably more common than one would expect,” said Gil Santistevan, department commander for technical services. In this case, he said it’s more newsworthy because the Garcias had a happy ending. ". .. A lot of kids now are getting the whole concept of 9-1-1 taught to them in schools and through public service announcements. It works.”
Carl A. Garcia appeared to choke up when he heard the recording of his son’s voice Thursday morning.
“He’s my little hero,” he said, reaching to hug Alex, who plays YAFL rookie league football for the Sartans and has spent the summer learning tricks on his scooter.
The great-uncle also has praise for his great-nephews.
“If not for them, I wouldn’t be here,” the elder Carl Garcia said. “I’m lucky I’m alive. They’re watching out for me.”