Volume 28 · Number 3 · Spring 2011
End Notes
Aggies to the Rescue
Gary Colberg's rescuers surround him Jan. 4 during their first reunion. From left: Leslie Whiteford '83, Colberg, Mike Molina '00 and Nelson Randolph.(Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
Gary Colberg, who led UC Davis' intramural and sports club program from 1966 to 2006, is grateful for a recent pounding he got at the Activities and Recreation Center from a campus employee and a couple of alumni.
The pounding — from cardiopulmonary resuscitation — helped save his life.
Colberg, 69, was exercising on a treadmill on Dec. 22 when he collapsed. Physician Mike Molina '00, M.P.H. '06, who had been lifting weights on the other side of the fitness room, ran to Colberg and found him unconscious and unresponsive, with no pulse.
Two other alumni at the gym, Leslie (Allen) Whiteford '83 and her husband, Kevin '85, had already pulled Colberg out from among the treadmills, giving rescuers more room to perform CPR. Molina started chest compressions and Leslie began mouth-to-mouth breathing. Two student employees, Susan Saephan and Megan Sullivan, raced in with an automated external defibrillator, or AED, which hangs on the wall outside the fitness room. Nelson Randolph, a safety officer with campus Grounds and Landscape Services, took over chest compressions while Molina hooked up the AED. They administered CPR until an ambulance crew and firefighters arrived and revived Colberg.
Colberg spent six days in a Sacramento hospital, where he was treated for arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat. An angiogram showed that his heart was in good shape.
Whiteford, a Davis school teacher, said she did not know exactly whom she had helped save until the next day when she returned to the ARC, noticed Colberg's picture on the wall and read an accompanying write-up about the man who invented inner tube water polo.
"It was the thing that made college really fun," Whiteford said during a January visit with Colberg. "I remember playing a game at midnight at Hickey Pool."
Molina, a physician with Sutter Health's Family Practice Residence Program in Sacramento, went to Stanford Medical School, but it's a good thing he has his UC Davis degrees, too. When he visited Colberg in the hospital, the patient immediately asked: "Are you an Aggie?"
The World in a Reusable Bag
Ann Savageau, associate professor of design, with BAG installation (Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
A tornado touched down in the Design Museum this year.
It was a tornado made from more than 1,000 plastic bags, the number that an average California couple uses in a year — with the tornado symbolizing how bags like these "are causing serious environmental problems" all over the world, said Ann Savageau, associate professor of design, pictured above.
The tornado, which was on display from mid-January to mid-March, was part of Savageau's installation titled BAG (Bags Across the Globe): Designing to Reduce Waste.
Savageau and students began making reusable shopping bags in summer 2008. The following summer, they sent two bags each to 100 people, asking each of them to keep one and give the other to a friend. Savageau collects photos of BAG participants — and their bags — from around the world. So far, the project has reached more than 60 countries.
Savageau planned to continue BAG at least through this summer. And the Runway Designers Club has adopted the project, with club members making and selling bags to pay for their Picnic Day runway show. Bags can be purchased at the Davis Food Co-op by e-mailing runwaydesigners@gmail.
Read Savageau's entry on the newly launched blog on UC Davis' Sustainable 2nd Century website.
Soap Suds
Tad Martin, longtime character in All My Children, used to be known as "Tad, the cad." Now he may become Tad, the UC Davis dad.
Tad's son, Damon Miller, is leaving Pine Valley, Pa., for California—to attend UC Davis. (Actor Finn Wittrock, who portrayed Damon since October 2009, did not renew his contract with the daytime TV drama.)
Damon departed the show in late January. As the magazine went to press, there was no word on how his fictional studies were going or if he was getting any care packages from home.