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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Spokes Woman: Social worker Karen Long bikes for life.
Taking the Long Way
Karen Long puts a pedal to her mettle
By Michele Leung
When most people are taking their Saturdays slow and easy, Karen Long is furiously pedaling 70 miles on her bike and telling the grizzly bear on her back to get off. Seventy miles is only the beginning of the story (and more on that menacing mammal later).
Willow Glen resident Long is undaunted by such distances. By day, she works as a social worker in the trauma center at San Jose Medical Center. By night, she trains for bike marathons to raise money and awareness for many health-related charitable organizations. Friends and corporations sponsor her for these events.
Her peers at the hospital have selected her to be a local nominee for the national Frist Humanitarian Award. The award is named in honor of Dr. Thomas Frist Sr., the founder of Healthcare Corporation of America.
Each local HCA center nominates a volunteer and an employee whose work promotes community wellness. "We emphasized that this should be given to those who go above and beyond the call of duty working as a professional and working collaboratively with others," says Leslie Kelsay, director of public affairs at SJMC. "It was a stiff competition because we set the bar pretty high."
A community and corporate panel in Nashville will review individual portfolios to select one winner in each category. Both national winners will receive $1,000 in HCA stock, and a $1,000 contribution will be made to a charity in their name.
Long first attracted her peers' attention in 1995 when she embarked on the California AIDS Ride. The seven-day ride covers a 530-mile route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and allowed Long to buy her first road bike.
Three years later, Long tackled the Leukemia Society Rock & Roll Marathon in San Diego as her next project. Live bands play along the course to press the runners on. Each runner was paired up with a leukemia patient, in whose honor the runner trains and runs. "It's motivating to see people in a wheelchair and an oxygen tank," she says. "You stop complaining."
Long had bad luck with weather during the last two events, as a heat wave each year made it dangerously hard to continue. She hopes that Mother Nature will cooperate as she tackles the Leukemia Society's Elite 100 Death Ride this July in Markleeville, near Lake Tahoe.
They don't call it the Death Ride for nothing. A team of 100 Bay Area cyclists, training since January, will cover 139 miles in one day and bicycle through five mountain passes in the Sierra Nevada. They will gain 16,500 feet in elevation.
This past weekend, Long was in Danville, putting those 70 miles on her bike. Which brings us back to the grizzly bear, her friend when lactic acid builds up and her legs refuse to budge on the course. "A lot of it is psychological and you talk yourself through it," she says. "I tell myself that a grizzly bear is on my back, and I need to get it off." Oddly enough, that simple statement does the magic.
She admits training hasn't been easy and considers the ride a nearly impossible feat. "I made a commitment to participate," she says. "It's not supposed to be easy. I had to give up weekends to train, but I will honor it through the difficult times."
Training partners help when the legs begin to feel as sturdy as Jell-O. Long has struck up a friendship with Kathleen Witmer, a Willow Glen neighbor with whom she trained for the Rock & Roll Marathon. "We motivate each other," says Witmer. "I know if I bail out, she's going to give me grief."
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Good Cheer: Karen Long (left) confers with her co-workers at the trauma center at San Jose Medical Center.
Long participates in these events because of the goal she wakes up with each morning, which is to make an impact in others' lives. She is also involved with AIDS Resource and Information Services as a counselor for HIV testing, and as a contributor with the Georgia Travis center for homeless children and mothers.
The desire to affect her world is what drew her to be a social worker, where she acts as the bridge between doctors and the patients' families. One of her hardest duties is to break the bad news to the families. "It's a poignant family moment. I consider it to be a privilege to be with them at the time of death," she says. "It's another important moment when the whole family comes together, like a birth."
Seeing how life and death come together at the hospital also served as an impetus for Long's contributions to health-related causes. "Usually people don't do this without having been touched in the past," she says. "I see this every day. It was difficult not to get involved."
There is a lull this morning at the nursing station in the hospital. Long goes into a room and sits down. Standing up in high heels for 10 hours at a time would make anyone's feet scream, but she insists it's not a big deal. (Her secret? Buying high heels half a size larger.) She looks out the window and says, "It's a sunny day outside, but most people here don't know it."
A poster in the room catches her attention. It's a flier for the 50th anniversary party of Dick and Carmen Viera. Long says that Dick Viera, a rancher in Hollister, nearly drowned recently and was brought to SJMC. She repeatedly had to prepare his family for the possibility of his death. But she considers Viera a miracle because he survived the accident and has no complications now.
"Mark, I'm turning in my RSVP to the Viera party to you," she says to Mark Youngblood, a nurse in blue scrubs.
"The party is a nice pat on the back," he says.
Long's pager goes off, alerting her that there's a child trauma patient coming in by ambulance soon. The message has been changed to an adult patient. Now there are multiple victims. Either we have a bunch of people coming, or someone doesn't know how to page, she mumbles.
A rushing crew of nurses, doctors and paramedics converge on seven victims who were in a two-car accident on the freeway. "Hi, my name is Karen Long, and I'm the social worker here," she says to a woman lying down with leaves and dirt in her hair. "You're OK. Is there a family member you would like me to call?"
The woman's daughter, with a neck brace, tape over her forehead and a bandage over her right eye, is nearby. "I cut my finger," the girl says.
"You sure did, punkin. Can you tell me where else it hurts?"
"Just my finger."
Long finishes attending to each victim and makes sure that each family is notified. She waits out in the hallway to catch her breath and for relatives to come in. "This shows that life can change in a second flat," she says.
"Hey, are you going out on any long rides again?" says a man in green scrubs.
For Long, the ride will be just as challenging as cooking for the100 dinner guests for a fundraiser she once held at her house. An incentive to get through the training and the ride is to get back her gardening time and Saturday morning coffees with girlfriends. But "I'm going to try to do something every year," she says.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
