Recognized For Cardiac Care

Torrance Memorial Medical Center’s Lundquist Lurie Cardiovascular Institute received the Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award, Resuscitation Gold Quality  Achievement Award and Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award.

Torrance Memorial Foundation board member David McKinnie and his wife, Kak, tested their luck at the 2016 Holiday Festival Gala. With no strategy in mind, they purchased five Holiday Festival opportunity drawing tickets and hoped for the best. Coincidently, the winners of the 2013 and 2014 opportunity drawing also happened to purchase five tickets when they entered. Five must be the lucky number.

Back in 1987, as a promising young banking executive at Inglewood-based Imperial Bancorp, Don Douthwright rarely played golf. But his boss, Imperial’s co-founder, the late George Graziadio, was an avid golfer and a firm believer that the golf course was as useful as the boardroom for making connections and striking deals.

Alfred and Rozelyn Redisch had three passions in life: family, philanthropy and travel. The couple, who passed away in 2012 and 2015 respectively, never did anything by halves. Their enthusiasm for travel led them to take more than 125 cruises during their lifetimes.

Louis Graziadio vividly recalls attending a meeting as a young boy in the early 1960s, with his dad, noted philanthropist and longtime Palos Verdes Peninsula resident the late George L. Graziadio, Jr. The gathering was inside a trailer on the construction site of Torrance Memorial’s soon-to-be-built new patient tower.

Joseph Hohm and Steven Spierer have been friends for nearly 40 years. Their friendship has led to a partnership in real estate investments and joint family vacations. Hohm and Spierer are also aligned when it comes to supporting local health care. Both are members of the board of the Torrance Memorial Foundation.

We live in a wired society. Most people use cell phones and tablets throughout the day to conduct work and school-related business and to stay connected with cherished family and friends. Donor and former board member of the Torrance Memorial Foundation, Jeffrey Neu recognizes the value of maintaining a connection to others.

Jessie Savolt of Torrance was only 36 when she developed acute mitral valve regurgitation, a condition that occurs when the mitral valve doesn’t close properly and allows blood to leak backward into the heart. Savolt had become extremely sick very quickly, with troubling symptoms that included severe fatigue and shortness of breath. After being diagnosed, she underwent two consecutive mitral valve replacements—one mechanical and one tissue.

People often don’t give much thought to the exhaustive work of the heart—the muscle that pumps every second of every day for an entire lifetime. That is, until something goes wrong: their heart valves become dysfunctional, an irregular heartbeat disrupts their lives, or a devastating stroke or heart attack occurs.

While living with AFib for 26 years, Redondo Beach resident Barbara Hancock never lost hope that she would find an alternative remedy for her chronic disease. At age 79, her persistence paid off. Last October she underwent a procedure on the forefront of AFib treatment—WATCHMAN™ Left Atrial Appendage Closure (LAAC) therapy.

Medical research is essential in delivering optimum health care as physicians and nurses learn more about the best evidence-based treatments for various diseases to improve patient outcomes. While some may think of research as being done only in distant, isolated labs—it’s exciting to learn that cutting-edge cardiovascular research and clinical trials are currently being conducted here in the South Bay at Torrance Memorial Medical Center and have been for many years.

Jim Andrews’ first encounter with Torrance Memorial Medical Center was in the 1980s. After being diagnosed with cancer—a long story he says—he was in the hospital for four full months. It was a long time to be away from home. It could have been unbearable. Except that it wasn’t.

Through it all—the treatment, the tests, the emotional roller coaster—Andrews knew that from the administrative staff to the nurses and doctors, he was in not just capable hands, but “good hands.”

1. RECORD KEEPING

Blessed with the birth of four 9-pound children more than two decades ago, with the youngest now finishing college, it would be reasonable to expect that Kim and John Whitcombe’s thoughts and energy would shift toward typical empty-nester pursuits, such as travel or a home remodeling project.

Jespa Awomah was used to seeing children start to cry or run away when they would first see him. In his small, mostly pagan village in Cameroon, Africa, his condition was viewed, even by his family, as a curse or bad omen. When he met people for the first time, he kept his eyes and head down. In 2012, by then age 12, Jespa continued to pray for the same thing he had prayed for every day since he could remember.