On Tuesday United Hatzalah volunteers Chezi Rosenbaum and Tom Elnadiv from Kiryat Malachi each received an alert to a medical emergency in their area. The alert would end up being a lot longer and more involved than their normal medical responses are.

Both volunteers dropped what they were doing and rushed out to provide medical assistance to the injured person. When they arrived at the address of the emergency, they found a woman who had badly sliced her finger in an electric food processor.

“The woman’s finger was very badly cut,” said Chezi. ”We bandaged the finger and prepared her for transport to the hospital. She decided to head to the hospital with her husband, but she had a problem. She told us that she was watching her own child as well as the child of a neighbor and that she couldn’t go to the hospital until the child’s mother came back to pick up the baby.”

Tom and Chezi looked at each other and knew that their service was not yet done for the night. Chezi told the worried mother that she needed to head to the hospital right away, but she shouldn’t worry as he and Tom would stay to watch the children even offering to provide the baby with a bottle until its mother returned. “We are all parents and we know how to watch children and give a bottle,” Chezi said as he reassured the mother.

After the incident, Chezi spoke about the extended call and said: “This incident isn’t so different from many other cases that I and other United Hatzalah responders receive. We rush to the scene to help people, and sometimes that includes going the extra mile beyond the medical treatment that we provide. It’s part of the job.”

Chezi has been volunteering with United Hatzalah as an EMT for two years he himself is married and a parent and he claims that he was raised to help others whenever he could.

“My mother was a woman of giving and kindness. She always raised me and my siblings to give to others and share acts of loving kindness with everyone. Today is the anniversary of her death and I as I reflect on the incident from earlier this week, I cannot help but recognize that a lot of what I do is inspired by her example.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem/Photo Credit: United Hatzalah)