KAREN: So, in your early days as a health aide did you report to the Indian Health Service? Is that who you were working for?

TRUDY: Well, we had contact with them, a lot. So they knew what we were doing and why we were doing it, how we were doing it and who we were taking care of.

And they set the rules at the Indian Health Service at Mt. Edgecumbe. That's how I had got to go to training in Anchorage, is because they recommended that I go.

When we went to Mt. Edgecumbe to do interview of the different things that we knew, I told the doctor: “Never have I been ever involved in any surgery or anything, seen anybody in surgery.” And they made arrangements for us to watch surgery, me and Alma Cook. Alma Cook and I got into everything.

KAREN: And what was that like watching surgery?

TRUDY: It was okay for me. They said: “Now where would you cut?” and I was: “Right here.” It was right --

KAREN: Yeah.

TRUDY: -- The guy said: “That's right, you're right.” But it was interesting. So much! We had one little boy in the earlier part of my health aide thing. He had just a tiny little piece of skin right here holding the top.

KAREN: Oh, his scalp was --

TRUDY: His scalp, yeah.

KAREN: -- had come off?

TRUDY: He ran under a car and it scalped him. And there was just a tiny little piece left. My husband was with me when we went to the store, and when we were coming back somebody came running down the hill: “That little boy ran under the car and his head is wide open. It's just hanging there!”

And we thought: “Oh my God, we better get there.” And it's lucky his grandfather was staying right on the corner when we were coming up that other corner. We ran up there.

My husband said: “I'm gonna go and see.” I said: “You're right with me so don't worry about it.” I didn't know he was scared. We ran in there and he almost fainted.

That guy said: “Your husband's gonna faint!” T he old man, the grandfather. And I said: “If you're feeling faint go outside. Just stay on the porch, it'll be a while before I come out.” But he came in and helped me finish. I took the scalp and pulled it back and cleaned the whole thing. And took the little pieces of --

KAREN: Skin?

TRUDY: -- rocks and --

KAREN: Oh, oh.

TRUDY: -- stuff on the top of his head. I took a tweezer and I was just taking them out: “Does that hurt?” “No.”

And I said “If it does I'm just gonna drop it and just let the doctors in Juneau do it.” “No, it doesn't hurt.” So, I cleaned him up and put a band aid on his head, and we had to put a whole one all around 'cause it was just complete, you know --

KAREN: You wrapped -- Did you wrap a big bandage around it?

TRUDY: Uh-hum (affirmative). And he didn't feel it.

And I said: “You be very careful, don't get rough and play.”

I said: “You just be careful so that the bandage doesn't come off your head, you need to keep it on.” When he went to Juneau the doctor called me, he said: “That was a very good job you did. We didn't even have to wash the kid up, but we did anyway. There was no trace of sand or anything in it.”

I said: “Thank God, that's all I worried about.” Because, you know, they could get infected very easy from that. Here his scalp was hanging down when he was running down to his grandpa's house and the boys: “Hey, stop!” And he was so shook up that he was running down to his grandfather's.

Then they came after us. We were just gonna turn the corner when somebody said he got hurt. We lived up on a hill, above where he was living. And we were gonna head up that way when we just were turning around that corner they came and told us the little boy's scalp was hanging down. They said his head, but it was his scalp.