See what happens when 2 strangers with Modesto ties encounter woman drowning in Hawaii
A Modesto emergency room doctor working pretty much nonstop since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly 2 1/2 years ago certainly has earned a leisurely family vacation by now. Right?
That’s the position Dr. Nathan Stuempfig recently found himself in, enjoying a beautiful August afternoon on a calm Hawaiian beach far from the high-pressure demands he’s used to in Modesto’s Kaiser Permanente Hospital.
But when lives need saving, duty calls. And guys like Stuempfig, thankfully, answer the call.
“People were screaming for help. I looked, and a couple of lifeguards were pulling somebody’s body out of the water — lifeless,” and a good ways out in otherwise shallow water, he said.
Stuempfig, 43, quickly swung into action, joining Dr. Nicole Loeffler-Siu, on a separate family getaway, and the young lifeguards as they performed CPR on a 58-year-old woman. She had gone under while swimming and failed to surface, apparently the victim of something like a seizure, stroke or heart attack, Stuempfig figured.
His job was holding a mask over the patient’s face and squeezing a big bag of oxygen into her lungs. Within a minute or two, the woman’s pulse, heartbeat and breathing returned, and eventually she regained enough consciousness to speak as paramedics took over and carted her off to the hospital.
This all happened Aug. 4 at fairly remote Lydegate Beach on Kauai, an island west of the more popular Oahu.
That’s a faith-restoring ending to a fairly scary story. Connections drawn by the two vacationing doctors make the memory even more special.
It turns out that Loeffler-Siu is Modesto born and raised, a graduate of Beyer High School. She now works in neonatal intensive care in Kaiser’s Vallejo hospital, and she and Stuempfig found they have mutual acquaintances.
“It feels like we’re a Kaiser family,” he said.
Making Modesto proud
She also is the daughter of Flo and Michael Loeffler. He recently retired from a Modesto law practice, snapped the photograph accompanying this column and shared it with me. Armed with Stuempfig’s first name, I enlisted the help of Kaiser public relations to track him down.
Most first responders have similar off-duty-rescue stories, not all ending as happily as this one. I wonder if ER nurses and doctors, by virtue of their honed life-saving skills, are called into action even more than most. Stuempfig said he has encountered, and assisted with, medical emergencies in airports and on airplanes, for instance — “but this was my first beach experience,” he added.
Reflecting on the rescue, Stuempfig was impressed that lifeguards on a beach would have at the ready an oxygen bag and oropharyngeal airway, a device that keeps a tongue out of the way, giving a patient a better chance at breathing.
“I’m used to having all the resources of a hospital,” he said, “so I do have appreciation for those (lifeguards), how little they have to work with and how much impact they can have. It definitely was a team effort. Everyone knew their role and was good at it.”
