Nurses called mother, reserved hotel room and called taxi for
out-of-state accident victim
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – After Jason McElrath was involved in a car accident and taken to Saint Louise Regional Hospital, both he and his mother, Theresa, expected he would receive the proper treatment for his injuries.
What they didn’t expect was that the hospital staff would, they say, go above and beyond in making Jason comfortable and welcome in an unknown city. Besides keeping in touch with Theresa, who lives hundreds of miles away in Yakima, Wash., the emergency room nurses helped Jason get his prescription medication and a hotel room in Gilroy for a night.
Jason McElrath was driving northbound on U.S. Highway 101 on the afternoon of July 12 when the accident occurred. He is a student at Long Beach City College and had worked to save enough money for a road trip back to Yakima.
Instead, he totaled his Honda Civic in Gilroy in a single-car rollover crash. An unidentified motorist swerved into his lane, causing Jason to swerve into the left lane, according to Theresa McElrath. Jason over-compensated, and his car traveled off the highway, over a ditch, and rolled over both sideways and bumper-to-bumper before coming to a rest on its hood.
“Jason described his time in the air as having gotten ‘… some serious hang-time’,” his mother said.
He was taken to Saint Louise with cuts on his feet from the car’s broken glass, and severe and painful bruising across his chest and hips from the seat belt. He spent about four hours in the emergency room, and called his mother to tell her about the accident.
Theresa McElrath said she was beside herself thinking that Jason had no one to lean on after the traumatic crash. But Emergency Room Nurse Karen Chacon put her worries to rest, she said.
“She reassured me that he was all right,” Theresa said.
Chacon filled Theresa in on her son’s treatment and what he could expect during recovery. Then she found a hotel and reserved a room for Jason to stay in, and gave Theresa the name and address. Because Jason was without a car, Chacon also called a taxi cab to pick him up from the hospital, take him to pick up his prescribed medication, and finally take him to his hotel. Later that evening, Chacon called Jason to ask if the pain medication was helping to reduce his pain.
Chacon said she and her colleagues try to offer similar assistance to accident victims who live out of the area.
“That’s part of what we do,” she said. “My big thing was, I have a son his age, and if something like that happened to my son out-of-state, I would be freaked out.”
With the assistance of a friend who was in the area, Jason McElrath collected his belongings from his car and eventually made it to Yakima, where his mother said he is mending and working to buy another car.
Although Jason didn’t come across Gilroy under the best of circumstances, Theresa said she is glad he ended up here.
“To come into contact with such kindness and consideration was a blessing that my son and I experienced through the people who stepped up to the plate for us when we needed them,” Theresa McElrath said. “Well done, Gilroy!”
