KAREN: Well, you had said that there'd be another one who --

TRUDY: The one that was a health aide before me was Florence Jackson. She died in a boat wreck or something. She drowned. Her and her husband and her uncle.

KAREN: So did you work with Florence? Were you both health aides for a while?

TRUDY: I just did that one, just that one week or two. One or two weeks.

KAREN: And then she died?

TRUDY: Then she died.

KAREN: Oh.

TRUDY: I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. And I was scared. Never been so scared in my life as then.

KAREN: So what did you do?

TRUDY: Nothing. I was too scared to do anything. But I got some older people to tell me what to do. You know, if somebody got cut or anything.

Then it was nothing. After a fashion it was nothing. Because we'd been taught. They taught us and taught us and taught us how to check for broken bones. God! I was off the road seeing a patient and there's a kid from Angoon in Hoonah and he was joyriding around in Hoonah. And he had a car wreck. And one other person went out there and came back and said: “He is pretty smashed up. His hip is really broken to bits.”

And I happened to be cooking berries and I told my husband: “Just kick the berries off, we'll put it back on to cook after I come back.” My daughter came and he said: “Just let this cook until such and such a time, we're going on a house call.”

We went out and I checked the boy that they said was all battered up. He was from Angoon. That was Barbara's boy. And I was checking him, I said: “Where do you hurt?” He said: “Actually the only place that was hurting was the hip, now it's not.” Here it was pushed in a certain position that he couldn't feel it. But he had a broken hip.

And I told, well -- told the guys: “Get him on a stretcher and get him into the hospital.” We went back and called the hospital and I told them they need to check him because he feels like he has a broken hip and the doctor said: “Broken hip? How could that be?”

I said: “Well, he was in a car wreck for one thing, off the road, and we went out there to check.” He said: “Okay, I'll take your word for it.” He called me back and he said “Yeah, he does have a broken rib”--

KAREN: Broken hip.

TRUDY: Broken hip. I guess they didn't really have that much faith in us. But those of us that really wanted to learn, learned. And Barbara was one of them. Marge Adams, me and Barbara that I know of, because we were close.