Jewish Group Is Quick to Answer Any Call for Help

Zvika Brenner went to a North Hollywood synagogue for the funeral of a man he never knew.

As a fellow Orthodox Jew, Brenner wanted to pay his respects to the stranger--Yaakov Aminov, a Valley resident who had been gunned down at Los Angeles International Airport by an Egyptian immigrant at the El Al Israel Airline counter on July 4.

Aminov’s pregnant widow, Anat, fainted during the funeral. Brenner, a certified emergency medical technician, helped revive her. The burial was to be held in Israel, Aminov’s homeland, but Anat was unfit to travel alone and her doctor could not accompany her.

At a moment’s notice, Brenner decided to accompany Anat Aminov on a flight to Israel. He had only the clothes on his back and his bag of medical gear.

“I went to a funeral and ended up coming back three days later,” Brenner said. “But sometimes, when life is at stake, you drop everything, because life takes priority.”

Brenner, 51, is president of an Orthodox Jewish volunteer EMT corps known as Hatzolah, or “rescue” in Hebrew. It is the only such service in Los Angeles.

Members of the nonprofit group work in the heavily Jewish Mid-Wilshire and Fairfax areas, racing from their regular jobs on short notice to handle medical situations ranging from scraped knees to heart attacks. On occasion, they go above and beyond the call of duty, as in Brenner’s unexpected trip to Israel with Anat Aminov.

Hatzolah volunteers “are very special people,” Anat Aminov said. “I felt very protected that he came with me,” she said of Brenner.

Though Hatzolah is not intended to replace the city’s emergency medical system, its members live or work in the square mile they serve and can usually respond to calls in less time than Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics.

“We can do anything from deliver a baby on the street to saving a gunshot victim,” said Chaim Kolodny, the group’s operations supervisor. “But the first question we always ask is, have you called 911?”

The Los Angeles operation, started a year ago, was the brainchild of Kolodny, a rabbi and director of Los Angeles Cheder day school in Hancock Park. He was once an EMT for Hatzolah of New York, the first Hatzolah, which was established 25 years ago. Today there are about 25 Hatzolah groups worldwide, from South Africa to Australia.

Hatzolah of Los Angeles started out modestly, with 15 volunteers. They were mostly people with ordinary day jobs who were not certified EMTs, but they knew basic techniques, such as CPR.

The group now has a 24-hour hotline staffed by 10 women dispatchers and 30 men who are Los Angeles County-certified EMTs. A non-emergency number--(323) 931-6453--provides information on Hatzolah’s coverage area. It also has a Web site, www.hatzolah.org.

Hatzolah volunteers, including Kolodny, made news in August when they alerted police that a man resembling the composite sketch of a suspected serial rapist was prowling Hancock Park. The police arrested the man and say he is responsible for four sexual assaults in the neighborhood since July.

Though Hatzolah is completely funded by the Jewish community--with a $100,000 budget--its services are available to anyone in the service area.

Hatzolah volunteers--like other EMTs, whose training is a step below a paramedic’s--cannot prescribe medicine or use syringes.

Unlike their New York counterparts, they do not take patients by ambulance from an emergency scene to the hospital. But they are trained in such things as taking a patient’s vital signs, administering cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and using an automatic defibrillator to revive someone in cardiac arrest.

In the Los Angeles group’s first year, the volunteers responded to about 100 calls, most of them not life-threatening.

Hatzolah volunteers also bridge the cultural and linguistic gap that may separate non-Jewish emergency workers and Jewish patients. Kolodny said many Jews in his neighborhood are Holocaust survivors who may speak only Russian, Hebrew or Yiddish.

“It’s helpful having Hatzolah on scene to do translations,” said Daryl Arbuthnott, chief of LAFD Battalion 18 in the Wilshire-Fairfax area. Some Jewish patients “have their own unique customs and beliefs that we’re not necessarily attuned to. They can calm patients down.”

The cultural insight is especially important when emergencies arise during religious holidays or on the Sabbath, when observant Jews do not work or drive.

For example, Brenner said, some Jews may not want to drive or go to the hospital, even in a possible emergency.

“If someone is in a life-threatening situation, they may then only feel comfortable calling us, and we are then allowed to attend to that patient,” Brenner said.

Although Hatzolah of Los Angeles now serves only one neighborhood in the city, its founders hope to expand to other areas. Their next big project involves a partnership with New York Hatzolah to organize 300 volunteers who would be ready to fly to Israel within 48 hours in the event of a war.

For the volunteers, the motivation to drop everything and be available 24 hours a day is simple:

“We don’t do it for the pat on the back,” said Kolodny’s wife, Shoshana, who is a radio dispatcher. “This is what we love to do.”