Wrong number, right call

A woman gasping for life answers her phone. A stranger hears her plea and helps save her.

By LINDA GIBSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 19, 2001

TAMPA -- When the phone rang about 8 p.m. Wednesday at 92-year-old Luella Chester's two-bedroom house in East Tampa, she was in the midst of heart failure.

Fluid building up in her lungs made it hard for her to breathe. Her pulse beat extremely fast and irregularly. Oxygen levels in her blood had dropped to a dangerous low.

She picked up the receiver and heard a young woman ask for Mary.

Even though it was a wrong number, she blurted out, "Lord have mercy, I'm so sick. I need help."

The caller, Jill Kalish, 25, didn't know at first what to think. She had been trying to reach 77-year-old Mary Chestnut, her family's housekeeper of 24 years.

Confused, Kalish asked whether this was Mary, and hung up when the woman screamed, "No."

That might have been the end of it, had Kalish not begun to worry about the unknown person on the other end of the wrong number who had begged her for help.

She dialed correctly and asked her housekeeper what they should do.

Chestnut began dialing the wrong number Kalish had dialed, but nobody answered.

"If it takes me until next week, I'm going to keep calling," Chestnut told Kalish.

Finally, about 9:30 p.m., the woman answered her phone again. "She said, "I'm so sick.' I said, "Calm down . . . give me your address.' " Then she dialed 911.

When the ambulance arrived at St. Joseph's, "She had some really bad looking vital signs," said Andrew Alexander, the emergency room physician who treated her. "I don't think she would have survived the night."

She was admitted with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure.

She was able Thursday to meet the strangers who had helped her. She didn't remember talking to Kalish and Chestnut, or the phone calls they had made to her.

"Who are you?" Chester asked when Kalish and Chestnut walked into her room.

"This is Jill, she helped me find you," said Chestnut. "We saved you last night."

"I'm glad you did," Chester said.

They learned Chester never had children and lives alone. How old are you, someone asked. She grinned. "Sixteen," she said, winking.

Chester's nephew, 73-year-old Ozell Tolbert of Tampa, said he had seen his aunt earlier Wednesday.

"She wasn't feeling good. She said she had a chest upset," he said. "I didn't know what to do so I went and bought her some Alka-Seltzer."

She called him later that night to say she was sick. The ambulance Chestnut summoned was there when he arrived.

Dr. Alexander said Chester's prognosis is good. She was in fair condition Thursday. Social service workers will find a nursing home for her. Her heart condition makes it too dangerous for her to live alone anymore, Alexander said.

- Linda Gibson can be reached at (813) 226-3382 or gibson@sptimes.com.

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