Local Heroes

You probably see them around town, in line at the grocery store or maybe you run past them on the trails. They don’t look different from most of us, but they are—because they’re heroes. Inside you’ll learn about our Local Heroes, most of whom were nominated by our readers, and how they contribute to our community. Whether they’re veterans, community organizers or just all-around volunteers, these Local Heroes make life in Central Oregon better for all of us. So if you see these folks around town, give them a high five and say thanks.

In many ways Josh Cook is an unlikely candidate to transform America's moribund health care system
An emergency room physician, Cook set out to be a teacher only to find himself practicing medicine despite the fact that he never completed his undergraduate degree – it wasn't required for him to be accepted into medical school.
“To me it was a much shorter and direct way to being a teacher.”
Instead of teaching, he found himself practicing family medicine as a doctor of osteopathy, a more traditional practice that emphasizes hands on medicine and direct contact with patients.
Within a few years, Cook made his way to the emergency room and in doing so found his niche. It's where Cook has been for the past 20 or so years, tending to broken bones, delivering babies, treating cardiac cases, performing emergency surgery on car accident victims and everything else that comes with the day-to-day reality of the ER. For the last decade and a half Cook has been the face of emergency room medicine in Prineville where he has served as the both the chief of staff at the Prineville hospital and the emergency room director, overseeing a staff of 12 physicians that covers emergency medical duties in both Redmond and Prinevillle.

Angel Notion, the solitary medical resource for underprivileged families in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, exists because one Bendite decided to make a difference.
“Twenty years ago I was living in Bend, and I had an opportunity to vacation to Playa, and the first time I put my feet in the sand, I felt like it was home,” said Angel Notion Founder, Lavonna Redman. “I moved my family down here within six weeks.”
She held many posts in the tourist, Caribbean community, including hotel owner and restaurateur, before concentrating her efforts on humanitarian work.
“After a few years, there was something I needed to do for the people,” she explained. “So I started a school for special needs children.”

Last November, a climber attempting The Wambat Route in Smith Rock State Park lost his hold and fell hard to a ledge below. Luckily for the climber, the Deschutes County Search and Rescue Mountain Rescue Unit was training at Smith Rock that day. They moved into action and immediately initiated the rescue.
“He fell onto a ledge, which is a tricky rescue,” said Richard Adler, team member since 2007. “This was the first time we were able to perform a ground-up rescue. It worked perfectly.”
Adler is one of 118 volunteers on the Deschutes County Search and Rescue crew who devotes hundreds of hours to training and rescue missions all in the name of keeping Central Oregonians safe.

Once or twice a year Julie Bostrom, a busy mother of two, leaves behind her children and husband, co-owner of Timberline Mountain Guides, to follow her passion.
The St. Charles Hospital emergency room nurse books unlikely destinations for her vacations. Rather than kicking it on a beach, Bostrom prefers to use her time to help others, specifically, impoverished children who are often overlooked by the rest of the world. The veteran nurse regularly travels to far-flung locales in India, the Middle East, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Honduras and China to volunteer for Operation Smile, an international organization that offers reconstructive surgery for children with facial deformities like cleft lips and cleft palates, a condition where the two sides of the face don't fuse in the womb. Such afflictions often severely limit a child's ability to make friends, go to school or even smile.

It's not that Clarence Carnahan doesn't know what to do with his golden years. Carnahan plays tennis twice a week. He likes to travel and play golf. But the 83-year-old doctor still makes the trip into the Veteran's Affairs (VA) office in Bend once a week to meet with ex-soldiers, some whose service dates back to World War II, to help them deal with the lingering effects of combat.
A veteran himself, Carnahan was drafted into the service during the Second World War, but gives little thought to his own service, which he describes as light duty. The men he has treated over the years as a VA psychiatrist are the heroes, Carnahan says.