Nurse Joins Red Cross Team Bound for Armenia

Sandra Woodruff, a registered nurse from Garden Grove who specializes in spinal cord injuries, leaves for Armenia this month to head a 15-member Red Cross team that will help treat patients injured in last year’s earthquake.

Woodruff, 41, who resigned from her job at the Veteran’s Medical Center in Long Beach to make the trip, was one of four American nurses and physical therapists who were chosen to be part of the medical team.

The group plans to care for patients and train Soviet medical staff in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, where it will stay for 6 months.

A friend and colleague of Woodruff, nurse Mary Lotterer, also has resigned from the Veteran’s Medical Center to participate in the program. The other Americans, chosen from 70 people who applied for the positions, come from Illinois and Virginia.

International Specialists

Spinal cord specialists from Ireland, France, Austria, Canada and Japan will make up the rest of the team.

Woodruff said the trip to Armenia will be her first such excursion as a representative of the Red Cross, and her first international trip.

“What we are going to do is share our knowledge and our expertise,” she said. “I’m a second-generation Red Cross volunteer in Orange County, and our motto is ‘people helping people.’ And because I’m a spinal cord specialist, this is right down my alley.”

Woodruff said that Armenian and Soviet officials have identified 219 earthquake survivors who are suffering spinal cord injuries, although she said that the Red Cross group initially will work with only 25 of those, who range in age from 14 to 35.

She said she has not been briefed on what conditions the group is likely to find in Yerevan, although she understands that several clinics and hospitals are still standing.

“Basic medical care is basic medical care,” she said, “but I assume we are going to be working under austere conditions.”

Woodruff said she first thought of taking part in such a trip when she heard another Red Cross nurse from Orange County tell of her 3-month trip to Mexico City after the earthquake there.

“The time is right,” she said. “Spinal cord injuries are a unique speciality. We’re needed.”

Although Woodruff will leave her job in Long Beach, she said that the Red Cross will pay her a comparable salary for her time in Armenia.