What do you want me to do about it?

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By virtue of her age and her diminutive stature, 85-year-old Ellie Lindecrantz surely qualifies as a little old lady. Nobody would dare call her that, though. She's made of tougher stuff.

Still, occasionally everybody needs help, and on Monday it was Ellie's turn.

She had arrived at Denver International Airport about 1:30 p.m. to catch a 3:09 flight to Florida. She has serious coronary artery disease and has found that spending a few months of the year at sea level works wonders. Her husband had driven their car down and planned to meet her at the airport when she arrived.

Ellie had requested a wheelchair to take her to the gate and was waiting under the arrival/departure screens when she started to feel chest pains. "I hurt a lot," she said. "I knew I needed help."

A young man stopped to look at the screens overhead. "I said I had severe chest pains and really needed some help," she said. "The man said, 'I hope you feel better,' and walked away."

She called to another person nearby asking for help. She just needed to get to the airport urgent-care facility, she said.

The woman kept walking.

Ellie took a few steps toward a woman wearing a uniform and monitoring the lines at the ticket counter. "I said that I really needed somebody to help me," Ellie said.

The woman looked at her ticket and said, "You should ask American Airlines to help you."

Ellie sat down. She took another nitro, but the pain was severe and she was beginning to panic, so she called her daughter, Greta Lindecrantz, on her cellphone.

Greta was in her car, driving to Golden, but she dialed 911 immediately.
"This is an emergency call," Greta told him. "My mother needs help."

"What do you want me to do about it?" said the call-taker.

"It was not a good experience," Ellie said later from her bed at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital.

The worst part for her was the sense of abandonment.

The throbbing swarm of human activity was devoid of humanity. Ordinary people looked the other way as she pleaded for someone to help save her life.

They were in a hurry.

They had planes to catch.

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Ugh.

Sounds like she eventually got help of some kind...?

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yeah, she is in the hospital but plans on making the trip down to her husband in florida when she is released.

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What a sad commentary about humanity!

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I have found that many times when faced with a real emergency for someone else, or with something clearly of paramount importance to someone else, a lot of people will react as though it were of no greater consequence than a dramatic scene witnessed on their TV.

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sad...SAD world we live in.

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You know, I'm going to have to be Obviousman here.

If the woman had a cell phone, why didn't she call 911 off the bat?

OK, so she was at an airport and thought she could get someone there to help her.

I keep seeing her saying to people, "I really need someone to help me"

If she could get that much out, why couldn't she say "I have a heart condition. I'm having chest pains. I need you to call the emergency services at the airport. I'm having a medical emergency."

Now the individual people might have been douche bags, but who knows how she actually stated her needs?

I never understood that stuff about when someone about to get drug off by a train, or they're hanging off a cliff, or having a heart attack and who do they call on their cell phone? Their sister, or their barber. Sure you're scared, that's what 911 is for.

Most people don't expect to come across someone having a heart attack. They literally have to be told that someone needs help.

I'm not a medical person, but have worked in the medical field most of my life. I always tend to keep my eyes open if someone starts looking "funny" I'm surprised how many times I've gone up to someone and quietly askied "Are you OK?" when no one else in the room even knew what was going on.

Usually the person will say something like "I'm alright, just having a little (fill in the blank). Don't worry, not an emergency" However, they seem glad someone noticed.

This woman's been around long enough, with a heart problem that she should know to open her mouth and ask for what she needs.

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Well, she told the first guy she had chest pains, according to the article - I gather.

I wasn't there and didn't hear - the apparent quotes do leave me thinking at least some of those folks thought she just wanted help getting on the plane.

Still, 85 and in a wheel chair... seems quite a fair number passed her on pretty blithely.

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ossobuco wrote:

Well, she told the first guy she had chest pains, according to the article - I gather.

I wasn't there and didn't hear - the apparent quotes do leave me thinking at least some of those folks thought she just wanted help getting on the plane.

Still, 85 and in a wheel chair... seems quite a fair number passed her on pretty blithely.

oh I agree about the 1st guy, but then again you've seen so many of the people at airports, business travelers all absorbed in their work. He sounds like he was just a jerk.

That's what I mean, if I worked for the airlines, and anyone came up to me saying "I need help" without saying more, I might not realize there's a problem.

Airports are a strange place, everyone coming and going, people in an unfamiliar situation, busy looking for your gate, have all this paperwork in your hands.

The woman that the older lady said "just walked by". How do you know this person even heard her?

There's just too many unknowns about this.

Ha. I just remembered a story a friend told me. He was waiting at the gate. It was really crowded. All of sudden, the woman sitting in the chair opposite him grabbed this small dixie cup she had and started vomiting into it.

He hadn't noticied she looked sick, when she hurled no one really looked at her. She just kinda wrapped the cup in a napkin and put it under the seat.

It sounds surreal, but, airports are a strange place

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I was once in a grocery store trying to find some asiago bread for dinner, middle of the day, the place was packed with people. They were going on about their business, rushing around as people do. Then, suddenly, one of them just sort of fell sideways, hitting her head on the thick, wooden corner of a bread stand and pulling her cart on top of her body.

I looked around and tried to yell for help, but it was one of those situations in which you're not exactly sure if that's the right thing to do -- I didn't know that she really needed any special attention...yet. What came out was a sad plea for someone to take my place and relieve me from doing what I was about to get myself into.

So I rushed over, pulled her shopping cart off of her (while naively asking her if she needed help). Then she began jerking around as if in a seizure and I noticed that she was bleeding profusely from her head.

This is when my HELP siren finally kicked in. Out of about thirty or more people within earshot, not a single person moved, except for that curious pivot in my direction to stand and stare at the woman who might just be dying on the floor.

It's amazing how people will completely ignore you while you stare at them yelling -- begging -- for them to help you...and they'll just sidle on over to get a better look.

I finally got through to 911 and began to help her with the operator's instructions as a bag boy from the front of the store came across and finally helped me.

That incident left me with absolutely no trust in any human's compassion for another. While what happened to old Ellie was sad, I can't say that it is in any way shocking.

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yuck
yuck
and more yuck.

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Good for you, Individual.

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Do any of you remember the Kitty Genovese case? In 1964, she was murdered on the streets of Queens, New York. There were 38 eye witnesses to the murder, yet no one called for help, even at the time that she could have been saved. This case was studied by a lot of psychologists to try to figure out why this happened.

The link tells the entire story, of which I have excerpted a portion. It is a fascinating read.

Quote:

One dynamic brought forth was the Bystander Effect. This theory speculates that as the "number of bystanders increases, the likelihood of any one bystander helping another decreases." As a result, additional time will pass before anyone seeks outside help for a person in distress. Another hypothesis is something called the Diffusion of Responsibility. This is simply a decrease in the feeling of personal responsibility one feels when in the presence of many other people. The greater the number of bystanders, the less responsibility the individual feels. In cases where there are many people present during an emergency, it becomes much more likely that any one individual will simply do nothing.

In essence, the 38 witnesses felt no responsibility to act because there were so many witnesses. Each one felt that the other witness would do something. Social psychology research supports the notion that Catherine Genovese had a better chance of survival if she had been attacked in the presence of just one witness.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/kitty_genovese/1.html

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I remember the Genovese story, it was famous for a long time.

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I remember that from when I was little. Just vaguely, but it was scary.

How sad that is.....

she looked so beautiful in that photo on the first page.

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Was that the one where she was stabbed on the street with people looking on in from their apts?

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littlek wrote:

Was that the one where she was stabbed on the street with people looking on in from their apts?

That was the one.

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Gah! Yes, it is. I hate that story. We studied it in a college soc course.

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What do you want me to do about it?

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