The events unfolded as Darren and Deb Spitzer’s family moved through a typically busy weekend schedule: Daughter Claudia had a morning basketball game at Indian Valley Middle School, daughter Morgan a volleyball tournament in Columbus, and father Darren’s accounting job drew him into work in the midst of tax season.
As usual, Dan Spitzer chipped in to help, taking 11-year-old Claudia to her game and, after lunch with the kids and Darren, taking them for the afternoon.
In retrospect, one of the biggest breaks the Spitzers got arrived Dec. 25, when Claudia’s uncle, Scott Krahenbuhl, gave her a cell phone for Christmas.
“She was not supposed to have a phone until she was 12, and my brother went ahead and did it,” said Deb Spitzer, Claudia’s mother. (Note: The Spitzer children like their Uncle Scott.)
When her grandfather began driving erratically as he took her and her 8-year-old brother, Zachary, from their home to his on Saturday afternoon, Claudia used that phone to text and call her mother at the Columbus volleyball tournament.
That Deb Spitzer noticed the call in a noisy gym in which she’d missed others was a break, too.
Deb Spitzer is particularly proud of Claudia’s persistence in letting her know there was a problem and the calm she maintained as her grandfather nearly ran a stop sign and just missed a utility pole.
Mrs. Spitzer, a physical therapist, said that although her father-in-law sounded normal to her on the phone, her son, Zachary, later would tell her he was afraid he was going to die and found his grandfather’s behavior so uncharacteristic that he said “that wasn’t my real grandpa.”
After Claudia worked with her mother to get her grandfather to pull off the road, then reached over to turn off the ignition, Claudia made small talk with her grandfather in a voice her mother could hear on the phone and describes as “very calm and sweet.”
Another break came when Dan Spitzer told Claudia their location at Jackson Road and Ohio 72, information she relayed to her mother, who relayed it to Darren en route.
Once Darren Spitzer arrived, the emergency and medical communities did their part.
He said the nearby Hustead Emergency Squad was there quickly, arriving just before Med-Trans, and that his father was whisked to Springfield Regional Medical Center, then by Mobile Intensive Care Unit to Miami Valley Hospital.
Deb Spitzer said her father-in-law got “very quick treatment.”
Miami Valley Hospital spokeswoman Nancy Sickel said that’s in part because the hospital keeps an neurointerventional radiologist available around the clock.
The family said that early Sunday Dr. Bryan Ludwig performed a cerebral angiogram to restore blood flow the left side of Dan Spitzer’s brain.
“He’s really slow, and he’s not quite right, but there’s no real severe damage,” said Nancy Spitzer, Dan’s wife. “He’s doing well.”
Nancy Spitzer called Claudia a hero and an angel, and the family reported that Dan Spitzer, from the beginning, was saying Claudia’s name.
“We’ve been blessed all the way through,” she said. “God has his hand in everything concerning it.”
Claudia didn’t disagree. But she did say Monday with a smile that her Uncle Scott was jokingly trying to horn in on the credit for giving her that cell phone for Christmas.
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