Stella Krumrey,
Transcript Section 3

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KAREN: So the health aide, explain a little bit about what the job is and what you end up doing.

STELLA: It's -- basically what the health aide does is we see patients and report it to the doctor. You know, we are kind of like eyes and ears for the doctor that we report to.

KAREN: Uh-hum. And the doctor that you reported to was where?

STELLA: When I first started?

KAREN: Uh-hum.

STELLA: Was all the way up in Anchorage.

KAREN: Oh.

STELLA: It was through a radio, so it was those -- those years when we still didn't have telephones in the villages, so I had to use the two-way single sideband radio to talk. And it was mostly like you have to have somebody relay for you because the -- the reception was not good, you know, or you couldn't -- it was --

KAREN: Yeah, I was going to say, you could get from here to Anchorage by two-way radio?

STELLA: Yes, for some it -- we always did. It was just -- I never could understand it, but yep, it was.

KAREN: Hum. And so when did it switch to a doctor being here in Kodiak? Or is -- is that -- you said first it was in Anchorage, and then --

STELLA: Oh, our -- yeah, we had -- it was Public Health Service up in Anchorage.

KAREN: Uh-hum.

STELLA: Again, we worked for, and KANA, when had they formed, took over, I think it was 1975, '76, somewheres around -- I can't remember what year, but that's when we started the doctors from here we would talk to. And -- and then we, you know, got the telephones during that time, so we had to use telephones.

KAREN: Do you remember when the first telephone --

STELLA: The first one we had, we had only one telephone in the whole village and it was in our Tribe -- our City Council building, and we had to use that phone.

KAREN: Uh-hum.

STELLA: And then it was back in -- it had to have been '80s because I became a health aide in '80, and I was still using the radio. So it was probably a couple years after I became a health aide --

KAREN: Uh-hum.

STELLA: -- is when we had.