East Bay Doctor In Right Place At Right Time To Save Injured Cyclist in Death Valley

There are some jobs that are best left back at the office. Psychiatry, Dr. Rebecca Hirsch will tell you, is one of them.

"You have to turn it off," Hirsch said. "You have to put it away."

The human drama Hirsch deals with every day at work is carefully kept outside her home and certainly not taken on vacation.

Still, on a recent trip to Death Valley, Hirsch came across a person in need and had to step in and help.

"There was somebody down," Hirsch said. "If somebody's down, you help."

Hirsch, her daughter, and her sister were on a jeep tour of the area in early January. Their tour driver was taking them to see Badwater Basin when they came across something in the road.

"The tour guide said, 'There's a cyclist in the road,'" Hirsch recalled. "I said, 'Stop. I'm a doctor. I need to get out.'"

Hirsch found a man on his side, moaning, and in the fetal position. A bicycle lay in pieces next to him and the helmet on his head had a chunk missing. Hirsch could see the man bleeding from a head wound but could only guess what his other injuries may be.

Although it had been twenty years since Hirsch had last practiced hands-on medicine in medical school, she jumped right in to help.

"I just knew I had to stabilize his head and neck because I could tell he had a head injury," Hirsch said.

Hirsch enlisted other bystanders to carefully roll the man onto his back, all the while keeping his head and neck still to prevent worsening any potential spine injury.

For the next hour, until an ambulance arrived, Hirsch cared for the man, holding his head steady in her hands and trying to get information from him.

She learned the stranger's name was Buzz Ayola. When she asked for the phone number of a relative, though, Rebecca recognized the area code and realized the two had something in common.

"925? Buzz, where do you live? He said, 'I live in Dublin.' I said, 'I live in San Ramon.'"

When Rebecca asked him where he got his medical care, Buzz told her Kaiser Permanente in Pleasanton. "I work at Kaiser Pleasanton!" Rebecca told him. "So it turns out we are neighbors and I work at the healthcare facility where he receives his primary care."

"Well, she saved my life," Buzz said. "Didn't know her before this. She was at the right time at the right place."

Buzz had suffered not only a head injury but multiple broken vertebrae. If Rebecca hadn't known what to do, Buzz could have been left unable to walk.

Buzz is not only grateful for all that Rebecca aid but for what he now considers her to be: "We will be lifelong friends. There's no doubt about that."