Beyond Stillness – Stories After Stroke
Beyond Stillness empowers stroke survivors to articulate and publicly share their stories as gifts of inspiration and hope. Through a reflective story-crafting process, survivors uncover and share the wisdom gained from their recovery. Their gatherings further strengthen bonds and build a compassionate community.
Pediatric survivor shows that stroke strikes at any age
Sara Michelle Photography. The 2018 Cheetahs girls volleyball season was off to an exciting start. In the opening game just a week prior, 12-year-old Mariah Fisher’s turn at serving the ball earned her distinction as the team’s highest scorer. She was anxious for game two. In the team huddle at warm up, Mariah became flush with...
Stroke leads to happily ever after for young survivors
To stroke survivors Tara and Sean, the month of May will forever hold deeper meaning to them than National Stroke Awareness Month. The couple gathered with family and friends this month to celebrate their wedding and the incredible journeys that brought them together. In 2016, Tara, a native California girl and graduate of Valley Christian High School in San...
Paramedics reroute ambulance for lifesaving stroke care
When a 911 call is received in Santa Clara County, emergency dispatchers follow medically-approved protocols to help them determine the type of emergency response the patient may require. Based on the caller’s answers to specific questions, dispatchers alert emergency responders, including the fire department and ambulance, of a possible stroke patient. Once on scene, paramedics then follow prescribed emergency...
Chuck Toeniskoetter – Founding Member of SAF
Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, in connection with leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc., reports a weighty statistic based on findings from their 2010 Survey on CEO Succession Planning. Over half of today’s companies are unable to immediately designate a successor to their CEO. Why? Lack of succession planning. Chuck Toeniskoetter, however, can’t relate....
Rita Ecdao-Lubey – Patient Care Liaison/CMA
Rita Ecdao-Lubey exudes confidence. She’s the person who controls her situation, focusing on possibilities rather than limitations. That’s why it comes as such a surprise when Rita explains that her life was once restricted by fear. Stroke changed that. “I didn’t feel afraid anymore,” says Rita, who suffered two strokes in 2012 at age 50. Rita was grocery shopping...
Mark Youngblood – Registered Nurse – Retired
The signs were there. First, a hand unexpectedly failed to perform a regular function. Facial numbness followed. “I was in total denial,” says Mark Youngblood, a registered nurse of nearly 30 years who suffered an ischemic stroke in 2014. Mark, 55, rose before dawn on March 31. He looked forward to his morning exercise routine of weight training and...
Phil Matteson – Assistant Chief w/ CA Dept. of Forestry & Fire Protection (Cal Fire)
Throughout his career, Phil Matteson had seen countless cases of stroke onset. That’s how he knew exactly what was happening to him on a May morning in 2010, days before his 51st birthday. He was combing his hair when his hand suddenly stopped moving. Luckily for Phil, his wife was home and called 911. Referring to the Basic and...
Grace Sellers – See’s Candies
Fall 2013 was a busy season for Grace Sellers. She traveled to Central America with her brother to visit towns and friends they knew from their youth in Honduras as children of missionary parents. She and her husband Richard visited their grandchildren in Oregon, and Grace made a quick trip to Kansas. October 16 was a quiet day by...
Lincoln Krochmal, MD – Chief Medical Officer for Local Pharmaceutical Company
Crying is part of the healing process. That’s what Lincoln Krochmal, MD, tells stroke survivors and caregivers who attend the peer-to-peer counseling sessions and monthly stroke support group he leads at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC). “People think it’s a weakness to cry. Get it out of your system and get back to work,” he says with conviction....
Stroke survivor trusts instincts to seek help
Whether it was intuition or persistence, one could argue it saved Larry Mardock’s life. In June 2015, Larry, then age 60, had been working long days at the commercial/residential paving company he started 28 years ago, and took a quiet Sunday to log some extra hours. “I went to work for a while and came home feeling more tired...
Fast action saves father of three from devastating outcome
Bruce Yale’s story of stroke survival reads like a fast-moving script into the future. One minute, he was kneeling in his living room watching family videos with his wife and teenage daughter. The next, he was being rushed on a gurney to a CT scan while a neurologist interfaced with the hospital’s onsite stroke care team via live video....
Healthy sheriff’s lieutenant knows stroke can happen to anyone
Shea Johnson was a rising star at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office in 2014. At 40 years old, the lieutenant had nearly 20 years of service under her badge and she was aspiring to promote to chief deputy. She was also unknowingly challenging death. Blood was leaking from a tear in Shea’s carotid artery wall. Known as carotid...
Pat Dando – SAF, Founding Member
Pat will always be remembered as a "fierce advocate" for whatever cause she believed in. This is one of many things that made Pat Dando such a unique and special person." -Chuck Toeniskoetter, Founding Member of SAF "Some people we encounter in our lives serve to inspire. Truly inspire. Some not so much. Some of those truly inspiring people...
ER visit “just to be safe” confirms stroke emergency
It’s cold and dark at 4:30 in the morning. That’s how Brian Yee justified his hand fumbling when he locked the front door of his San Jose home. And the dull headache just meant that he’d be uncomfortable on the boat all day. Brian, 53, and his brother-in-law Greg left before dawn to go fishing the weekend before Thanksgiving...
Young Survivor Finds Purpose in Stroke
People think that only unhealthy people have strokes. That is so not true,” says stroke advocate and survivor Elizabeth Diaz. A fit runner, clean eater, and mother of two young children, Elizabeth was not a conventional candidate for stroke. She didn’t have high blood pressure or high cholesterol. She didn’t smoke. There was no family history of stroke, and,...
Stroke Survivor Warns of Risks Linked to AFib
It was during breakfast at home when Jeanette Arakawa, 85, started exhibiting signs of stroke. She was trying to ask her husband Kiyo a question, but he heard only gibberish. Kiyo asked Jeanette to repeat herself. The gibberish continued. Her following attempt to write revealed incoherent scrawl. Hearing commotion, the Arakawas’ son entered the room and immediately recognized Jeanette’s...
