By virtue of her age and her diminutive stature, 85-year-old Ellie Lindecrantz surely qualifies as a little old lady. Nobody would dare call her that, though. She’s made of tougher stuff.
Still, occasionally everybody needs help, and on Monday it was Ellie’s turn.
She had arrived at Denver International Airport about 1:30 p.m. to catch a 3:09 flight to Florida. She has serious coronary artery disease and has found that spending a few months of the year at sea level works wonders. Her husband had driven their car down and planned to meet her at the airport when she arrived.
Ellie had requested a wheelchair to take her to the gate and was waiting under the arrival/departure screens when she started to feel chest pains. “I hurt a lot,” she said. “I knew I needed help.”
A young man stopped to look at the screens overhead. “I said I had severe chest pains and really needed some help,” she said. “The man said, ‘I hope you feel better,’ and walked away.”
Ellie had four nitroglycerin tablets in her pocket. She took one, but the pain continued.
She called to another person nearby asking for help. She just needed to get to the airport urgent-care facility, she said.
The woman kept walking.
Ellie took another nitro.
The wheelchair still hadn’t arrived, she was still hurting, and she was getting scared, so Ellie took a few steps toward a woman wearing a uniform and monitoring the lines at the ticket counter. “I said that I really needed somebody to help me,” Ellie said.
The woman looked at her ticket and said, “You should ask American Airlines to help you.”
Ellie sat down. She took another nitro, but the pain was severe and she was beginning to panic, so she called her daughter, Greta Lindecrantz, on her cellphone.
Greta was in her car, driving to Golden, but she dialed 911 immediately. The Lakewood dispatcher picked up the call and patched it through to Denver, which transferred her to DIA dispatch.
“I told the person where my mother was, that she was having heart pain and that she needed help,” Greta said. “He said, ‘We haven’t had any emergency calls.’
“This is an emergency call,” Greta told him. “My mother needs help.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” said the call-taker.
In the meantime, Ellie, alone in a crowded airport, had taken her last nitro. She still had chest pains. It had been nearly 30 minutes, and she was frightened.
Finally, the wheelchair attendant arrived.
“I told him that I needed to go to the medical part of the airport right away,” Ellie said. But he didn’t understand. The attendant didn’t speak English.
He could tell that something was wrong, though, so he took her to another airport worker, a friend who could translate for them. As soon as he knew what she needed, the attendant sped her through the crowds to the infirmary, where she was stabilized and dispatched by ambulance to the hospital.
“It was not a good experience,” Ellie said later from her bed at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital.
The worst part for her was the sense of abandonment.
The throbbing swarm of human activity was devoid of humanity. Ordinary people looked the other way as she pleaded for someone to help save her life.
They were in a hurry.
They had planes to catch.
“Everybody is very busy,” Ellie said. “I realize this. But we’re not people anymore. We don’t have time to be people.”
In a culture obsessed with time, the airport scene rises above ordinary punctiliousness. It is the pinnacle of self-
important, buzzing, on-time activity.
And it’s the pits of human kindness.
Ellie will be back there soon. She hoped to be released from the hospital late Thursday, and when she gets the OK from her doctor, she’ll try again to fly to Florida.
But this time she’ll take a friend with her all the way to Fort Myers. It’s the only way she can be sure someone will be there who’s not too busy to care.
Diane Carman’s column usually appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
Jim Spencer’s column will return soon.
