Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The first lake effect snow storm of the season caused major delays for travelers trying to go about their holiday weekend expeditions. For one woman, it became a race against time after she received a life-changing call that a new heart was waiting for her.
"We had a 64-year-old that had left Rochester with her husband with a battery-powered heart pump on her way to Cleveland Clinic for a heart transplant. Now, obviously, they left Rochester driving through the holiday season, not anticipating the storm being as bad as it was, and they ended up getting stranded on State Route 5," said New York State Trooper James O'Callaghan in an interview with WBEN.
O'Callaghan says the 64-year-old woman and her husband were able to call the Cleveland Clinic for help before the heart pump died. The Clinic immediately contacted New York State Police.
"We were able to locate her with UTVs and snowmobiles out on State Route 5, get her, pick her up, take her to Portland Fire Department, which was the closest to assess the situation," O'Callaghan said. "We tried to take her to Westfield Memorial Hospital, they were unable to help, just with, obviously, with the heart transplant. We were able to actually escort her in Trooper vehicles to Jamestown airport, Chautauqua County, which was just out of the storm. And they had arranged a private flight, and flew her to Cleveland Clinic for the heart transplant."
O'Callaghan says the call originally came in late Friday night, but someone had posted on the New York State Troopers' Facebook page, and they were able to get information from there as well.
"You can see different people were commenting on it before we even put this out there. Other family members said, 'Pray for so-and-so, that would be greatly helped.' And so we actually found that. So it was like we're working on that angle event, and we're actually seeing it pop up on our Facebook comments part. It was just interesting to see the community, even when you're talking about people that don't live here on social media commenting about how crazy that is," O'Callaghan stated.