WAILUA — Life had seemingly slipped away from Russ Solstad, an 82-year-old visitor from Minnesota, when he was pulled from the water at Ke‘e Beach in Ha‘ena on Tuesday morning. His skin was blue. He had no pulse, and was
WAILUA — Life had seemingly slipped away from Russ Solstad, an 82-year-old visitor from Minnesota, when he was pulled from the water at Ke‘e Beach in Ha‘ena on Tuesday morning.
His skin was blue. He had no pulse, and was not breathing.
But after several tense minutes in which Solstad’s son and two members of the Halau Hula O Napua of the Big Island tried vigorously to revive him on the beach, the man registered a single heart beat, and then another, and another, and another.
The man’s life was spared after his son, Jim, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and Noe Kamelamela, a recent engineering graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an emergency medical technician, and Lani Pratt, a registered nurse, took turns administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation and chest compressions.
Solstad was taken by an American Medical Response ambulance to Wilcox Memorial Hospital, where he was last confined to the intensive-care unit.
Karen Napua Brown, kumu, or teacher, of the halau she started some 20 years ago, said medical personnel told her the man’s condition was “touch-and-go.”
Hospital spokeswoman Lani Yukimura said Thursday the man is in guarded condition.
It was by chance the 25-member halau and menehune, drivers and support help, were by Ke‘e Beach when the eldler Solstad got in trouble before 9 a.m. on Tuesday.
The halau had performed at the Ke Ahu o Laka, a platform dedicated to the Hawaiian goddess of hula located above Ke‘e Beach.
The man had reportedly gone snorkeling by himself, and was found underwater by his son, about 50 feet from shore.
The son pulled his father to the edge of the beach, where efforts to revive him began.
Pratt, a registered nurse at the Hilo Medical Center, said she and others were coming down a trail from the platform and were changing out of their hula costumes when she saw a woman at the beach walk toward a 911 emergency phone, and yell out “someone is drowning.”
Jim Solstad, Kamelamela, the daughter of Brown and a Kamehameha Schools graduate, and Pratt, all worked to revive the man.
The effort all seemed for naught at that moment.
“The man was already blue,” Pratt said. “I looked at him, and I didn’t think it look good. He had no pulse, and he was not breathing on his own.”
Other people with medical expertise came forward to try to give help, Pratt recalled. “A internist from California, and his wife, assessed the victim’s condition, and, after continued attempts to revive Solstad, “we still didn’t get any response,” Pratt said.
“We all thought that he was going to pass, because he was so blue,” said Brown, a perdiem family court and district court judge for the 3rd Circuit Court on the Big Island.
Then the miracle surfaced.
“Several minutes of giving CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation went by,” Pratt said. “And then the man had a pulse.”
Brown said the man’s son was, of course, relieved, that his father had been revived.
Still, he blamed himself for what had happened, because he had gone snorkeling with his wife, Norma, and left his father on the beach, Brown said.
The father didn’t want to go with them because he didn’t want to wear fins in the water, Brown said.
“The son felt guilty because he left the father by himself,” Brown said. “The father is old and frail. That was what he thought.”
Brown and Onaona Maly, the daughter of Walter and Irmalee Pomroy of Anahola and wife of former Kaua‘i resident Kepa Maly, helped out by driving Solstad’s daughter-in-law back to the Princeville Hotel, where the family had been staying, Brown said.
Brown and Maly picked up a change of clothes and medication for the elder Solstad, while Mrs. Solstad changed from her swim clothes into street clothes before getting a ride with Brown and Maly to the hospital.
The 25 halau members and menehune, drivers and supporters, including Brown’s husband, San Kamelamela, who heads the litigation unit for Hawai‘i County, wanted to make sure the man’s son and daughter-in-law were in good hands.
The younger Solstad is an engineer, and his wife is a teacher.
The halau members invited them to a lu‘au at Prince Kuhio Park, after getting permission from the Kaua‘i branch of the Royal Order of Kamehameha to do so.
The food, the warm aloha shown, and a chant, accompanied by the ipu, offered by the halau members, overwhelmed the Minnesota couple, Brown said.
“They were overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, of aloha,” she said.
- Lester Chang, staff writer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) or lchang@pulitzer.net.
