Rocky Point 911

Like the Lerma family, many Valley residents will head to Rocky Point this fall. Know your options in case of an emergency.

When Susi Lerma began packing for a family trip to Rocky Point in May 2005, it was much like countless times before, anticipating a relaxing getaway to the family’s beachside home in Cholla Bay.

Etched into her mind were numerous fantastic memories she and her family had forged while vacationing in what many Valley residents have come to know as “Arizona’s beach town.”

As an elementary school teacher and aspiring artist, the trips to Rocky Point meant a needed dose of Mexican culture, complete with fresh seafood and the beach landscape serving as a backdrop and inspiration for Susi’s colorful paintings.

The family arrived after a four-hour trip down familiar roads and began their vacationing routine, stopping to visit with locals who had become friends over the years. “It was a slow weekend,” recalls Susi. “Nobody was around. Nothing was happening.”

A freak accident would soon turn the trip and its uneventful beginning into a life-threatening situation, and the Lermas would find themselves depending upon a Third World city’s emergency response capabilities to save Susi’s life.

As Rocky Point has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village into a vacationer’s oasis, questions remain about its ability to respond in emergency medical situations, and though progress is being made, many visiting Arizonans rarely give it a thought.

Rocky Point’s Response

Roberto Herrera Esquivel sits in the office known as C4, where the mission is decreasing response time and increasing organizational efficiency in emergency situations. Esquivel is the sub-coordinator for C4, which was created in an effort to provide medical response services as the burgeoning tourist population in Rocky Point puts unprecedented strain on already meagerly prepared response agencies.

Located directly behind the main police headquarters, the C4 office is where the Red Cross, local fire department and police work together to coordinate emergency response.

Before October 2005, if there was an emergency while visiting Rocky Point, there was no such thing as 911. Now, those seeking urgent help can dial 066 and be routed to the C4 office. According to Esquivel, if an American cell phone works in Rocky Point and 911 is dialed, the caller will automatically be routed to the C4 office, opening crucial communications, especially during holiday weekends.

“We do not wait for a problem to happen. During the big days, we are at the station with our ambulance and paramedics ready,” says Jesus Torres, director of Rocky Point’s fire department.

Vacation Turns Tragic

Susi, her husband Bobby and their two adult children, Miguel and Amy, had just finished a relaxing breakfast at Xochitl’s Cafe, a favorite family stop. Afterward, Susi set out to buy ice while the rest of the family went to give Miguel’s new truck a ride over the rolling sand dunes.

El Perico, the store where Susi was headed, was a short distance from the café, but she missed the turn. While attempting to make a U-turn on the two-lane road, an oncoming street-cleaning truck carrying a 50-foot industrial water tank crashed into the driver’s side of Susi’s car. Her 2001 Infiniti J30 was T-boned, reduced to a pile of mangled steel, and then pushed over 150 feet.

After returning to the house, Bobby found a note telling him of the accident and instructing him to return to the café. There, a woman named Jen Rupnow was waiting to take them to Clinica-Hospital Santa Fe, where Susi was being treated.

“By the time we passed the scene of the accident, the car had already been taken away, so I had no idea what the extent of the accident was,” recalls Bobby.

When the family arrived at the clinic, they found Susi in a trauma room. She was laying on a gurney, bleeding from multiple scrapes, covered with bruises and having difficulty breathing as a result of broken ribs. In addition to the broken ribs, Susi had suffered head trauma, a broken ankle, a misaligned jaw, a bruised shoulder and permanent damage to her left eye.

 “They were sponging her off with towels while she was lying on the table. The table had a half-inch lip on it, and the water accumulated. So there was a half-inch pool of what looked like nothing but blood. It was just ghastly looking,” says Bobby.

 The doctors informed the Lermas they would need an additional hour to make sure Susi, who had already been at the clinic for several hours, was stable before she could be transported to the border for possible air evacuation to a hospital in the United States.

First Responders

In operation since 1958, the Rocky Point Red Cross is usually the first on the scene to administer emergency aid. Comprised primarily of volunteers, the Red Cross offers basic, affordable health care to both locals and tourists out of a single office located in the center of town. When a patient’s condition requires more advanced treatment, the Red Cross transfers them to one of the several clinics and hospitals.

Ramon Acosta, commandant of the Red Cross in Rocky Point and a paramedic for 17 years, oversees the 50 people working at the Red Cross. While residential and economic growth in Rocky Point is good for the town in general, the Red Cross must also grow and expand in order to meet increased demands.

“We do not have enough equipment for all of our ambulances,” says Acosta. “We need more offices in the city. We need more paid employees and a team of ambulances.”

Until recently, the Red Cross was constantly visible in the dusty streets of Sonoyta, Mexico. Since the organization relies completely on private donations for funding, volunteers would stand by their parked ambulances collecting loose change from motorists on their way to Rocky Point. Now, in an effort to change its image, the Red Cross recently decided to stage their collection efforts just once a year.

“We plan to raise money by sponsoring raffles and local dances,” says Acosta.

When the Seconds Count

Paramedics in blue jump suits stand next to their ambulances outside Clinica San Jose in Rocky Point waiting for the next call. Inside the clinic’s small lobby, tourists and locals with minor medical needs wait their turn to speak with the doctor on call. On the pastel-colored wall hangs a collage of photographs documenting Clinica San Jose’s experience in treating trauma and coordinating evacuations. In Spanish, the title of the collage says, “When the seconds count, count on us.”

Clinica San Jose employs bilingual paramedics, is open 24 hours and offers pediatric treatment, trauma treatment and emergency surgery. Dr. Francisco Javier Carillo Ruiz, chief of emergency, has treated patients at the clinic for seven years.

“The problem is people are not careful,” he says “[Rocky Point] is a good place to have fun, but you need to take care of yourself the same way you would anywhere else.”

Getting Home

When a patient’s medical condition requires capabilities beyond those of Clinica San Jose’s, the clinic works with hospitals in the United States to evacuate the patient by land or air. According to Ruiz, between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. patients are evacuated by planes flown out of the Rocky Point airport. Those needing evacuation after 7 p.m. are usually driven by ambulance to the border, picked up by an Ajo ambulance or flown out by helicopter.

From Clinica-Hospital Santa Fe, the Lerma family scrambled to make preparations to get Susi back to the United States. Miguel called the Border Patrol, and an agent told him to get her to the border where an ambulance would be waiting.

After the staff at Clinica-Hospital Santa Fe determined Susi was sufficiently stable to ride to the border, the family used her credit card to pay the clinic’s $1,700 bill, and the Red Cross arrived with an ambulance to transport her to the border.

“They were determined she was not going to leave unless we paid,” Bobby says of the clinic.

The Lermas paid the Red Cross $100, loaded her into the ambulance and rushed north on Highway 85 to Sonoyta, about 70 miles from Rocky Point. With no air-conditioning, the ambulance was stifling, though the family remained thankful to be heading back to the medical care offered in the United States. “All I could do was lay on the gurney and pray the rosary all the way to Phoenix,” says Susi.

Upon arriving at the border, Susi was loaded into an Ajo ambulance and taken to Good Samaritan Hospital on east McDowell Road, where she remained for a week. Despite numerous X-rays and tests to determine the extent of Susi’s injuries, doctors missed four hairline fractures in her pelvis. After a month of physical therapy, the fractures broke and she suffered a major setback in her rehabilitation.

After battling through another extended stint in physical therapy, Susi was eventually able to return to teaching, painting and taking care of her family. But, the results of the accident still affect her daily. She still endures dizziness from the head trauma she suffered and has the damage to the vision in her left eye.

“It’s just a miracle that I’m alive. It really is,” she says.

Despite her accident, after planning and then canceling a trip to Rocky Point, she ultimately returned with a friend.

“I was with a friend and it was a beautiful day, and we decided, ‘Let’s go to Mexico. Let’s go to the cabin.’ It was very spontaneous. As soon as we got to the dirt road, [where the accident took place] I fell apart,” she says.

Susi ultimately conquered her anxieties and resumed trips to Rocky Point. There, she says the community of locals her family has come to know over almost three decades of vacationing, greets her with long, joyful embraces.