Close Call

The following item was mentioned briefly during last night's TV news. A more detailed article appeared in this morning's newspaper. I found this article on the Internet.

First: I'm glad the woman was found in time and received medical treatment. Second: It's a reminder for all of us just how quickly things can go wrong when dealing with horses, as if we didn't already know. Third: Media coverage of horse-related stories is so LAME!

Anyway....

Sketchy 9-1-1 call leads to rescue in Wilsonville

by Rick Bella, the Oregonian

Wednesday May 06, 2009, 4:18 PM

WILSONVILLE -- Chalk this one up to resourcefulness, hard work and good luck. Without all of them, it's hard to know what might have happened to Amy Erickson after she was trampled by a frightened horse.

About 9 a.m. Wednesday, emergency dispatchers in Woodburn heard a broken cry for help. The 9-1-1 call, fading in and out, seemed to be about a woman in distress, possibly on Southwest Ladd Hill Road, which cuts through the horse country west of Wilsonville and south of Sherwood.

Woodburn dispatchers notified Clackamas County's 9-1-1 center, where dispatchers tried to piece together the fragmented clues.

They thought the caller might have been named Amy.

And they thought she could have been at a place called something like "Streamer Farm."

So dispatchers sent Sheriff's Deputy John Zbinden to cruise the area while they pored over databases of names, addresses and businesses.

"I was driving around, looking for a sign out on the road, like so many of these places have," Zbinden said. "That's when the dispatchers called to say they had figured out where I should go. And I just happened to be right there."

Zbinden used the callbox at the gate of Streimer's Stable & Equestrian Center -- which has no sign -- to call Michael Streimer, who buzzed him in. When Zbinden asked if a woman named Amy was there, Streimer told him she lived in the basement. When Zbinden didn't find her there, he headed out toward the barn.

That's where he found Amy Erickson, 43, lying in a pool of blood and vomit.

Erickson told Zbinden that a horse's hoof had become stuck in the track for a stable door. When she freed him, he spooked and kicked her in the head and trampled her.

Bloodied and dazed, Erickson crawled outside and used a cell phone to call 9-1-1.

By this time, the horse had calmed down.

"I was impressed with his size," Zbinden said. "This was not a pony. He was a big horse with big feet."

An emergency medical crew from Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue then arrived to evaluate Erickson and administer first aid. She was air-lifted by helicopter ambulance to Emanuel Hospital & Health Center in Portland, where she was listed in serious condition, undergoing treatment for blows to the head, chest and abdomen.

"If the dispatchers didn't have the savvy and wherewithal, we might not have located her," said Detective Jim Strovink, Clackamas County sheriff's spokesman. "Who knows what would have happened to her?"

-- Rick Bella: rickbella@news.oregonian.com