By Carl Nolte
San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 2008 San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco police are searching for William Etzler, a disabled man who was delivered to the city-run Laguna Honda hospital on a gurney Tuesday morning and then vanished-apparently into thin air.
According to his son, Bebe, Etzler was recovering from a stroke and other illnesses, was barely able to walk and was so disabled he could only say five words: “I am,” “thank you,” and “please.”
Etzler was being transferred from San Francisco General Hospital to Laguna Honda Hospital by private ambulance early Tuesday. St. Joseph Ambulance Service said they delivered the man, but Laguna Honda says they never received him.
“We dropped him off at ward F Four at Laguna Hospital,” said Richard Agnotti, president of St. Joseph Ambulance. “We gave him to the nursing staff. We did our job like we do every day. This is the first time anything happened like this.”
Laguna Hospital, meanwhile, has a different version. According to Laguna Honda spokesman Marc Salvin, two ambulance personnel arrived with a man on a gurney at Laguna Honda on Tuesday morning.
“They said they had a patient being transported from San Francisco General, but the nurse at the nursing station was on the phone and told the ambulance people she’d be right with them,” Salvin said.
He said they had indicated they left the man in Room 30. But when the nurse went to room 30, it was empty. No patient, no papers, nothing. “We never took transfer of this person,” said Salvin. “We had no indication he was ever here. This person had gone missing.”
Salvin said nothing like this had ever happened before.
Laguna Honda says it is customary for an ambulance service delivering a patient to have the receiving hospital sign papers acknowledging the transfer. Agnotti, of St. Joseph’s, says the industry standard does not require a document exchange.
In any case, whatever papers that accompanied Etzler vanished when he did.
As soon as they found that Etzler was missing, Laguna Honda officials called the ambulance service, the sheriff’s office, which handles hospital security, searched the hospital grounds and then called Etzler’s family, and filed a missing person report with police.
Bebe Etzler, the missing man’s son, was first surprised, then angry. He decided to mount his own search for his father, who, he figured, had somehow wandered off.
He went to his father’s house in the Excelsior district, then mounted a search for his father near Laguna Honda, and also at UCSF, where Etzler had also been treated for various ailments.
He also checked several neighborhood bars in the Excelsior, places where his father sometimes hung out. “I went out till 1 or 2 a.m. in the rain looking for him,” Bebe said.
Bebe said his father was very ill and could hardly walk. The stroke had left him nearly without speech. He also contacted a lawyer, who contacted the media in the hope William Etzler can be found. “I’m not gonna sue anyone,” Bebe Etzler said. “I just want my father back.”
William Etzler is 54 years old, white with Latino features, 5 feet 9 or 10 inches, 150 to 155 pounds, has brown hair going gray and brown eyes. He is retired. His last job was as a drug counselor at San Francisco General Hospital.
Charles Kelly, an attorney hired by the missing man’s family, calls the exchange “a handoff, like in football. This is a fumbled handoff, a mystery.”