‘Rescue 911’ Plot Won’t Surprise This Viewer--It Actually Happened to Him

Charles Ridgeway of Anaheim will be having an unusual reunion Tuesday night: He will be watching a television show about himself with the people who helped save his life.

Ridgeway last saw the Orange County Search and Rescue Team in March, at the end of a a frantic search to find him in an Imperial County desert area about 200 miles from home. Ridgeway, 47, was on a camping trip in a remote area with his family and did not know that a kidney he desperately needed for a transplant had become available.

The rescue team, joined by some of Ridgeway’s relatives and a KNX radio helicopter reporter, raced the clock to find Ridgeway and get him to the hospital while the kidney was still usable. They made it with just six hours to spare.

That search is the subject of a drama to be broadcast Tuesday on the CBS weekly television show “Rescue 911.” Ridgeway will join members of the rescue team at United Western Medical Center--Santa Ana, where the surgery was done, at 8 p.m. to watch the show.

Has Rare Blood Type

Ridgeway, an accounting manager for Rockwell International in Anaheim, was suffering from a condition diagnosed in 1976 as a genetic disorder that causes cysts to grow on the kidneys, eventually causing them to fail. Ridgeway’s condition began to deteriorate about two years ago, and this past February his name was placed on a national list of people seeking kidney donors.

Because of the rarity of his blood type--B positive--doctors expected that it would be a long time before a compatible kidney would become available. Just a few weeks after his name was placed on the list, however, a teen-age girl whose blood type was B positive died. (The girl’s identity was never made public.)

The people on the search team were cast as themselves in the drama, filmed last month. Ridgeway, however, declined to portray himself, on the advice of his doctors. Ridgeway could not be reached for comment Sunday.

“We are all pretty excited about having the opportunity to check up on him after all this time,” said Carol Stockdale, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Search and Rescue team. “We’ve gotten reports on how he was doing over the course of the last few months, but now we get to see for ourselves.”