
DATE: Wednesday, June 25, 1997              TAG: 9706250475

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  136 lines

RIVER RESCUERS DIDN'T HESITATE QUICK-THINKING NURSES MAY HAVE MADE THE DIFFERENCE IN SAVINGS A BOATER.

The quickly ebbing life of a boater who was critically injured Saturday night fell into the hands of two off-duty nurses who went to his aid without a thought for their own safety.

Both women jumped into the dark waters of the Elizabeth River, swam to shore and administered aid to the man and his girlfriend after the couple's small boat collided with another boat and careened into deep woods.

In the jungle-like thicket and later on the water, the women fought to pull him back from near death.

Joseph Dilucid of Portsmouth remained in serious but stable condition at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital on Tuesday, as details of his rescue came to light.

It took several private boats, a Coast Guard rescue team, the hospital's Nightingale helicopter, several paramedics and police officers to accomplish the rescue, but it was almost certainly the initial efforts of the nurses that saved Dilucid.

The women took no credit for their actions. ``I'm glad I was there,'' said Rhonda Dobbins, a registered nurse who was first on the scene. ``I don't think I did anything fantastic, just what I was trained to do.''

It was about 9 p.m. on the balmy first night of summer when the small boat with five passengers aboard ran head-on into a larger boat just south of the Old Virginia Railroad Bridge. The smaller boat hit the sandy beach at high speed and apparently went airborne, landing 30 or 40 feet into a bamboo thicket.

John Peters, the owner of a passing boat, said he came upon the scene moments later and heard the cries of the second boater, John Dixon of Norfolk. Although his leg was broken, Dixon managed to pull back into his boat Sheila Brown, who had been thrown into the water.

But there was another boat somewhere on shore. Peters used his boat radio to give a ``mayday'' call to the Coast Guard.

At the same moment, Danny and Rhonda Dobbins of Chesapeake, who were also out for a ride on the river, recognized Peters and offered to help. When Peters said there was another boat back in the woods, Rhonda Dobbins took off her shoes, jumped into the water and swam to shore.

``She's a funny lady; there are snakes and all in there, but it didn't bother her,'' Peters said.

Dobbins, a nurse at Autumn Care of Norfolk, a nursing home, waded through the thick bamboo and came upon a scene that looked like a jungle plane wreck.

``I saw him wedged between the bucket seats, his feet under the steering console. He had extensive lacerations and a huge bump on the right side of his forehead. There was a lot of blood coming out of his mouth and his bottom lip was kind of dangling there.

``He was unconscious and unresponsive.''

She knew she had to stop the bleeding and there was nothing else available, so she removed her shorts and used them as a compress.

Dilucid's pulse was strong, she said, and his breathing was all right, but it began deteriorating.

At that point, the Coast Guard rescue boat, which had been dispatched from Portside in Portsmouth, arrived.

``We didn't have any idea what we were getting into,'' said Petty Officer Stephanie McGinnis, who piloted the rescue boat.

``Mr. Peters said he had a guy with a broken leg, but there were a lot of people on shore yelling for us to come over there, that there was someone critically injured.''

McGinnis drove the inflatable boat as close as she could and Petty Officer Steven Mitchell jumped in and waded to shore.

When he ran into the woods, he said, the scene was ``pretty unreal.'' There was the injured man wedged under the steering console, with a woman who identified herself as a nurse attending to him. Another woman, Janet Palladino, who had been thrown through the windshield, sat on the back of the boat with deep facial cuts, in a state of shock.

``We need to get him out as fast as possible,'' Mitchell said Dobbins told him. He ran back to the boat, and got McGinnis to call for emergency help. They needed a backboard to transport the man, they said, because of possible spinal injuries.

Back in the woods, Dobbins told Mitchell they had to keep the man warm.

``The only thing that came to mind was my shirt and bulletproof vest,'' Mitchell said. He removed them and placed them on the injured man.

He then took an expandable baton and broke off the fiberglass surrounding the steering column, freeing Dilucid, but they wanted to wait for the backboard to move him.

Meanwhile, another couple who had stopped their boat at the Jordan Bridge Marina, Guy Humphrey and Michelle Miller, were approached by paramedics from Norfolk and Chesapeake. The paramedics couldn't reach the scene and needed the boaters to take them across the river, they said.

Once they reached the west shore, Miller, a licensed practical nurse, jumped in and swam to shore and went to Palladino's aid.

Dobbins learned that the injured man's name was Joe, and although he was unconscious, she thought he could probably hear, and continued to talk to him. ``Keep breathing, Joe,'' she kept saying. ``You're doing fine.''

Dobbins told Humphrey they needed to apply direct pressure on the injured man's face to slow the bleeding. And where was that backboard?

The rescue crews didn't have one, so they improvised and used the wood engine compartment from the damaged boat instead.

``OK, on the count of three,'' one of the rescuers said, and they moved him from the woods and onto the Coast Guard boat.

Dobbins went back to her boat with her husband. Miller stayed with the patients on the trip back to the Jordan marina.

On the way over, Miller told WAVY-TV News, Dilucid went into cardiac arrest.

She could not perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, she said, because of the extensive facial injuries. Instead, they cleared his airway, which had filled with blood, and he revived.

The injured were transported from the marina to Sentara Norfolk General by the hospital's Nightingale helicopter. Danny Dobbins, a Navy lieutenant and senior watch officer, has sent a letter to the Coast Guard recommending that the two nurses, as well as Peters and others involved be recognized for their unselfish acts.

``What these people did was nothing short of heroic,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

RICHARD L. DUNSTON

Rhonda and Danny Dobbins, left, and John Peters didn't think twice

about stopping to help boaters injured in a head-on boating

collision on the Elizabeth River.

Graphic

What Happened:

On Saturday, a small boat collided head-on with a larger boat just

south of the Old Virginia Railroad Bridge on the Elizabeth River.

The smaller boat hit a sandy beach at a high speed and apparently

went airborn for 30 or 40 feet, landing in a bamboo thicket.

The Rescue: The scene was : Pretty Unreal"