October 31, 2008

Beacon

Chuck Hoffman: Saving lives

By Bill Highlander
Editor

Driving along I-680, Chuck Hoffman began noticing black spots in his vision and his left side started going numb. “This is not good,” he said as he drove the car to the shoulder of the road and stopped.

Knowing he could not drive himself to get medical attention, he called his business partner to come get him. The friend showed up quickly and took Hoffman to the Good Samaritan hospital.

Emergency room personnel recognized his distress and quickly began a CAT Scan and MRI and determined that Hoffman had suffered a serious stroke. Because not more than three hours had elapsed since the onset of symptoms, a doctor administered TPA, an injection meant to correct the consequences of a stroke.

The odds of rapid recovery from a stroke are not favorable. But within a few hours, the symptoms were gone and after a few days of observation by the hospital staff, Hoffman went home feeling perfectly fine. He was one of the lucky ones.

Strokes rank third in the causes of death in the U.S. About 4,500 residents of Santa Clara County are hospitalized with strokes annually. Until recently, treatment for strokes was not effective and hospitals were not equipped to treat them effectively.

Chuck Hoffman changed that. Working with staff at Good Samaritan, Hoffman first tried to get local hospitals to institute treatment procedures for stroke, but found resistance. Teaming with Chuck Toenis-koetter, a prominent local businessman and Pat Dando, CEO of the Silicon Valley/San Jose Chamber of Com-merce, the trio started the Stroke Awareness Foundation.

Toeniskoetter and Dando had also re-cently suffered strokes and were fortunate enough to get TPA in time to ward off any disabilities. The foundation and the Joint Commission on Ac-creditation of Health care Organizations (JCAHO) developed the stroke center certification process.

Certified centers agree to treat stroke patients with priority and ascribe to a 17-minute “door-to-pin” procedure. That means, within 17 minutes a diagnosed stroke patient who is admitted to the hospital within three hours of noticing symptoms and is eligible for TPA will get the injection.

Stanford and Good Samaritan were among the first hospitals to be certified. El Camino, Kaiser (in Santa Clara and San Jose), O’Connor, Regional Medical Center and Valley Medical are also Certified Stroke Centers. Ten years ago, there were none and now there are 4,000 nationwide.

According to Hoffman, the foundation has been successful in getting ambulance companies to agree to take suspected stroke victims to a certified center even if another hospital is closer. This was a major step in convincing hospitals to seek accreditation.

The goal of the foundation is to make everyone aware of the symptoms of a stroke, to convince them to call 911 and see a doctor. More information about the foundation is at www.strokeinfo.org.

Hoffman considers himself very fortunate to have recovered from a major stroke without consequences. The stroke happened 10 years ago and soon he will be celebrating his 78th birthday. He is full of energy, gregarious and enjoys staying active.

Born and raised in Chicago, he worked in his father’s produce business before entering a long career in selling food machinery. He still sees his contacts in the industry and works part-time. One of his favorite memories is of a machine that could fill five ingredients of fruit cocktail into 1,250 cans in a minute.

A member of San Jose Rotary, he participates in the weekly meetings and volunteer work. “I enjoy knowing the other Rotarians and having them as my friends,” he says. Hoffman and his wife have lived in the Bel Aire section of Evergreen for about nine years and are fond of the community.

Without Hoffman’s persistence and the help of Toeniskoetter and Dando and the Foundation, the residents of Santa Clara County would not have the assurance of knowing that strokes can be prevented and treated successfully. He truly deserves being recognized as a Beacon in our community.

BEACON

A country song says “you can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.”

The Evergreen Times would like for the lights of interesting Evergreen residents to shine through a profile on such persons. Our community has educators, activists, business people, inventors, sportsmen, hobbyists, public safety persons – a plethora of fascinating people who should be recognized by their neighbors as a beacon for community involvement. If you know a person who should be recognized as a BEACON, contact highlander@timesmediainc.com and they will be considered for future issues.