Woodburn Independent Online

Local heroes honored at Red Cross event

• By: Charissa Bernard 
• Published: 9/10/2009 11:57:00 AM
• Last Updated: 9/11/2009 2:32:50 PM

Photo By: Charissa BernardHeroes recognized
Woodburn police sergeants John Mikkola and Nick Wilson received Red Cross awards for their work in the aftermath of the Dec. 12, 2008 West Coast Bank Bombing. Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell, whose life was saved in part because of the work of these two officers, spoke at the Salem event Sept. 10.

The Woodburn area was well-represented at the American Red Cross Willamette Chapter Real Heroes Breakfast Thursday morning in Salem as four locals were among the nine heroes named for this year. All nine of the heroes were nominated from throughout Marion and Polk counties and were chosen because of their exemplary demonstrations of professionalism and decisive and competent, life-saving actions.

Awardees with local connections included Silverton Hospital nurse Heidi Coleman of Hubbard, Woodburn Police Department sergeants Nick Wilson and John Mikkola and NORCOM dispatcher Tobey Olson, who lives in Molalla and works in Woodburn.

Nearly 400 people attended the Red Cross event, held at the Salem Conference Center. Before each award was presented, a video played, recapping of each rescue story.

Sgt. Nick Wilson and Sgt. John Mikkola: Professional Rescue Heroes

Only moments before a bomb detonated inside West Coast Bank Dec. 12, 2008, Woodburn police sergeants Nick Wilson and John Mikkola were instructed to go outside and double-check the perimeter for more explosives. Hearing the blast, Mikkola called for help on his radio and both men rushed into the bank to search for the five people who had been inside.

“When we initially ran inside, suddenly it was all dark now on that side of the bank,” Mikkola recounted in the video recap, which can be found online at www.woodburnindependent.com.  

They found that two police officers — WPD Capt. Tom Tennant and Salem Police Senior Trooper Bill Hakim — had been killed in the blast and that their police chief, Scott Russell, was badly injured. Making sure that the other two occupants in the building were safe, the two sergeants quickly turned their attention to Russell, who lost his right leg in the blast and was bleeding badly from his left leg.

“I remember Nick and I were standing over the chief and we looked down and he was real bad — I actually thought that he was probably gone,” said Mikkola. 

“I saw that Chief’s left leg was bleeding, I saw that blood was continuously pumping out of his leg. That’s when I grabbed my belt off from my pants and wrapped it around his leg,” said Wilson.

While Mikkola was preparing to administer CPR to the chief, Russell tried to sit up. Mikkola quickly began to calm his boss, instructing him to lie back down and wait for help.

“I don’t know if he could hear us at the time, but he did eventually lean back and started looking at us and so we talked to him and tried to let him know that everything was going to be okay,” Wilson said.

EMTs were quick to arrive on the scene, transporting Russell by ambulance to Oregon Health and Sciences University for immediate surgery. The chief has since had extensive surgeries to reconstruct his jaw and his left leg. He is also undergoing physical therapy to regain the use of his left leg and utilize a prosthetic for his right leg. He is back to working four half-days per week at the department. The chief spoke at the Red Cross event Sept. 10, after Wilson and Mikkola received their awards.

“I want you to know that what makes these two gentlemen heroes is more than just the actions they took on Dec. 12,” Russell said to the audience. “It’s their commitment to duty and honor that they show every day in their work and also in their ability to keep on performing after such a tragedy. … To me, that’s what makes them heroes above and beyond just the actions they took that night, which are exemplary, and the reason I am here with you this morning.

“We appreciate the support, and I think I speak for both these gentlemen that they’d just like to go back to being police sergeants now.”

The officers left the stage to a standing ovation, which lasted over 20 seconds. 

Afterwards, Wilson said while the recognition is appreciated, the department is moving past the events of Dec. 12.

“I think about the event when I’m prompted to, but we’ve moved on and begun to heal from that and continue with our jobs,” he said. “It brings back a lot of emotions for the officers we lost and the officers that are still with us. It means a lot to us to have played a part in that and help Chief Russell out.”

Heidi Coleman: Medical Hero

On the night of Aug. 29, 2008, Heidi Coleman and her husband Cory were retuning to their Hubbard home, driving north on Highway 99E just south of Woodburn around 10:30 p.m.

“We were driving down a very dimly lit part of Highway 99E and all of a sudden, we saw sparks flying and this car was just spinning out of control,” Heidi said in her video recap. “It happened so quickly.”

The couple had witnessed a high-speed crash between an sports utility vehicle and a truck. Just that month, Coleman had received her nursing licensure from the state board and landed a job at Silverton Hospital. For the few months prior, the 27-year-old had been teaching Red Cross health and safety classes in both Spanish and English. Armed only with these skills, she rushed to the aid of the occupants in both vehicles.

The SUV had been knocked on its side. Other passersby stopped to call 9-1-1, but didn’t know what else to do. Coleman immediately began speaking calming words in Spanish and English to the passengers.
“I couldn’t get to the people in the SUV and there was a lot of smoke coming out of the truck,” she recalled.
“There were two men inside, coughing, so I knew they were breathing.”

Through conversation with one of the men in the truck, Coleman discovered that he had neck, shoulder and chest pain. She instructed him to sit still, providing support to his head and neck with her hands.

Coleman could hear more commotion coming from the nearby toppled SUV, where onlookers were beginning to rock the vehicle to tip it back up on its wheels. She implored the people to stop the movements because the rocking could cause further damage to the spines and heads of the crash victims inside.

“It was very hectic, there was a lot going on: cars, people screaming, crying, smoke. … It just goes back to what we teach at the Red Cross in all of our classes,” Coleman said. “If it wasn’t for those classes, I don’t think I would have responded in the way I did.”

When the ambulance arrived, Heidi translated for the victims, helping the EMTs better care for them.    
“Speaking Spanish is a big part of how I want to help people, especially since there is such a large population of Spanish-speaking people in our community,” Coleman said. “In those (emergency) times, people can not always communicate well in their second language.”

Tobey Olson: Crisis Response Hero

For the past six years, Tobey Olson has answered frantic 9-1-1 calls at the North Marion County Communications Center (NORCOM) in Woodburn, but she will always remember the call she received just after 5 a.m. Dec. 21., 2008.

The caller was Aurora resident Glenn Kraxberger, who had been jolted out of sleep by his wife Jacque gasping for breath.

“It was scary,” said Glenn, who attended the Sept. 10 awards breakfast with his wife. “I thought she was having a seizure. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Glenn called 9-1-1, and Olson immediately called the fire department to respond to the house, located only four blocks away. Knowing the home’s front door was most likely locked at 5 a.m., Olson instructed Glenn to go unlock it, so responders could get in when they arrived. When Glenn did so, he opened the door and saw a frightening thing. An inch of rain amid temperatures in the mid-20s that night had left a thick sheet of ice over the Willamette Valley, isolating residents in their homes.

“Not only did we have the woman unconscious and not breathing, but we had weather conditions that were delaying our response,” said NORCOM director Gina Audritsh on the video recap about the incident.

Glenn recalls opening the door and saying, “Oh, crap” when he saw the ice storm. Pushing it out of his mind, Glenn ran back to his wife.

At one point, Jacque stopped breathing and Olson began to give Glenn instructions on how to administer CPR to his wife.

“He was obviously upset … but he stayed calm and he was purposed and he was doing exactly what I was telling him to do,” Olson said. “It was amazing.”

“Time kind of stopped,” said Glenn, who continued CPR for 10 minutes, until his neighbor, volunteer firefighter Gus Wettstein came through the door.

“It was a relief to have somebody else there,” Glenn said. “We were lucky.”

The fire department arrived soon after and Jacque was resuscitated.

She later underwent surgery to implant a defibrillator near her pacemaker. While she has lost all memory of the three months surrounding the event, she is sure of one thing.

“It’s truly a miracle that I’m here,” she said. 

Audritsh agrees.

“It’s not often that we give CPR instruction over the phone, and it’s more the norm that somebody doesn’t make it, unfortunately,” she said. “In this case, everything went right.

“A hero to me is somebody who is willing to go above and beyond the call of duty, whether it’s of their employment or whether it’s something they are doing in the community for others,” Audritsh continued. “Tobey did that.”

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