In times of need, the Florida Keys community stepped up. When the situations were dire, heroes stepped in to save the day. When the going was tough, there was no backing down. Here is just a sampling of the touching stories the Keys Weekly covered in 2023.
4-year-old boy meets a hero who saved his life
On March 7, Miles Fortunato and his family paid a visit to the Marathon Fire Rescue station to meet Capt. Joe Forcine, a man his parents and grandparents will never forget. As Forcine watched the family walk through the door, his face spoke volumes.
In early 2019, Miles’ parents, Jenn and Steve, brought their 7-month-old son on vacation to visit his grandparents in the Keys. What began as a small cough for Miles morphed within days into a refusal to eat and difficulty breathing. Doctors at the Fishermen’s Hospital emergency tents struggled to place an IV line in the dehydrated infant, and the decision was made to intubate Myles.
With the first helicopter en route to airlift Miles to Miami diverted due to an accident on U.S. 1, and a second bird still a ways out, the minutes remaining to ventilate both of Miles’ lungs were absolutely critical.
Enter Forcine.
With a pediatric background, Forcine’s number was called for help with the intubation. He immediately went to work.
“God was with me, and he put this idea in my head,” said Forcine. “I took a video laryngoscope for an adult and just put it in the corner of his mouth just so I could see. I took an extra long guide wire, and once I could see his opening, I placed that in, and then I was able to slide a tube in and go directly into the glottic opening to ventilate him.”
Miles was eventually airlifted to Nicklaus and faced an extensive road to recovery. But today, he’s a happy and healthy little boy with a family – including a younger brother and little sister on the way – who will be forever grateful to Forcine and the Marathon Fire Rescue staff who saved their little one’s life.
Business & sheriff’s officers build new ramp for Key Largo resident
On a hot June morning, CBT construction crews ripped away a series of old wooden stairs at the Key Largo home of Glenda Scott. In went a new ramp for the 81-year-old resident who lives on Hibiscus Drive — and it came at no cost to her thanks to local businesses.
In late May, Monroe County Social Services called the sheriff’s office to relay Scott’s challenging situation which forced her to climb a set of steps to reach her door. Eventually, the message reached Sgt. James Hager. When he wasn’t on duty responding to calls, Hager made some phone calls to gauge who might be able to help Scott. Hager happened to find two willing partners in KLI Hardware and Mike Rundgren and CBT Construction and Chris Trentine.
“They made sure this was going to happen,” Hager said.
Marathon triathlete overcomes crash, competes on the grand stage
A Marathon triathlete who overcame injuries from a bike crash in Key West overcame the big hurdle to compete in one of the most prestigious athletic competitions in Hawaii. Leandra Hutchinson told Keys Weekly’s Alex Rickert in October that the women’s Ironman World Championships was “every ironman triathlete’s dream.”
A triathlete since 2019, Hutchinson had completed her first full Ironman race – a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run, all back to back – in Cozumel, Mexico in November 2022. While competing in the Key West sprint triathlon in December 2022, an unforeseen road hazard sent her flying off her bike at 27 mph — landing on her head and shoulder.
“I separated the shoulder, I tore muscles and had lacerations all over my body,” she said. “I was down for the count.”
Faced with orthopedic surgeons’ warnings that she might never swim again – one of her favorite components of the race, while “I only run because it’s part of a triathlon,” she joked – Hutchinson began an extensive rehab process for muscles and a bone structure that will never fully heal in the absence of a complex surgery.
In July, she got an unexpected call: Her Cozumel time was good enough to qualify for the world championship race just three months away. With 48 hours to make her decision, Hutchinson had yet to ride her bike since the crash, and still lacked the range of motion to swim for more than a minute at a time. But the opportunity was “just the dream,” as she told her doctors, friends and family.
“If I say no, I’ll never know if I could have done it. So I said yes, and figured it out afterwards.”
A Key West veteran gets new home
The county’s code compliance officers could have continued to cite a property owner on Stock Island, where a ramshackle RV sat illegally on a messy lot, housing a man who has lived in the Keys for nearly 50 years and has owned that lot for more than 40 years.
The fines would have accrued and Ken “Bulldog” Julian, 87, would have worried endlessly about where he would go. But that’s not what happened, reported Keys Weekly’s Mandy Miles in November.
A collaboration among Cynthia McPherson, code compliance director, Cathy Crane, director of Monroe County Veterans Affairs, public works, county wastewater and the local nonprofit Homes for Veterans resulted in a new stilted home for Julian, who served in the Air Force from 1954 to 1958.
“I didn’t know what to think. I’m used to living rough,” Julian told the Keys Weekly.
In fact, he initially feared he was being scammed. But Deacon Peter Batty at St. Mary’s, where Bulldog attends daily Mass, assured him Homes for Veterans was not a scam.
