How It Began -- Miscommunications

For me, this started with an e-mail from Dick's brother, my Uncle Bob, on Wednesday morning. He had been trying to reach me by telephone, but 411 had given him the number of a Mary Testa in Studio City, an unfortunate misdirection. I've had the same number here in Studio City since 1991, and it's a shame they couldn't provide that information to my uncle when it was needed.

I was out in a client's office in Santa Monica when I saw the e-mail. Uncle Bob had received a call last weekend from a neighbor, who had seen a story about the plane crash in a local newspaper. Here's a link to the story:

The local newspaper story

More miscommunication: notice that the story says that Dad "walked away" from the accident. That hardly describes the situation adequately. Uncle Bob discovered that he had been taken the Inland Valley Hospital. When he called there, he was told that Dad had been discharged. There was no indication of the severity of the issue. Bob was trying to reach Dad on his cell and land phone numbers to learn more about what happened. After some time passed without any reply, he started trying to reach me -- unfortunately leaving messages on Mary Testa's answering machine.

If you know my Uncle Bob, you know that he is the family historian, having spent years honing his research skills in pursuit of his passion to know more about his family, the Heins and the Bangs. These research skills proved invaluable as it became clear that something was much more wrong that the newspaper and the hospital had communicated. He finally learned that Dad had not exactly been discharged: he had been transferred to "a Kaiser facility". They weren't forthcoming with further information, since they didn't consider him to be "immediate family"! He finally tracked down the specific location (there are hundreds of "Kaiser facilities") by finding the name of the helicopter facility that had transported him and getting the information from them.

About the same time, I also learned the name of the location from the first hospital. They were willing to help me after I was able to provide his full name, his address, his birthdate, etc.

So somewhere around 11:00AM on Wednesday, January 2nd, we learned that Dad had been in the ICU at Kaiser Sunset in Hollywood for days, without anyone knowing.