'I'm getting an ambulance . . . I don't want him dead'

From The Daily News of Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007

Dale Sturge is a mother. She also is a registered nurse.

The two 'job' descriptions met head-on during the night of Oct. 20.

That was the night the midget AAA North Kamloops Lions held a team party in the home of Kamloops Minor Hockey Association president Stan Burton.

A player off that team ended up horribly intoxicated and needed emergency treatment at Royal Inland Hospital.

That player's father was out of town that weekend and the teenager was staying with family friends Monica and Ladd Maloski.

It was Monica Maloski who drove to the Burton home to retrieve the player in question. When she returned home and realized the condition the player was in, Maloski picked up the phone.

"I'm the nurse who Monica phoned," Sturge says. "She called me. She was scared to death. She was terrified."

It will be a long, long time before Sturge forgets what she heard on the phone that night.

"If you heard Monica's voice that night . . . she was in pure agony," Sturge says. "I said, 'Do you want me to come over?' She said, 'No, I'm getting an ambulance. I'm not wasting my time here. I don't want him dead.'

"She was terrified . . . she was totally petrified that he might die."

Sturge, who is terribly busy at this time of year as she runs a flu clinic, has a young son who she says had been cut from the midget AAA team prior to the party. She knows, then, that there but for the grace of her God. . . .

Sturge knew the Lions were having a party that night but says that's all she knew.

"I didn't know anything. . . . I just knew of a party," she says, referring to a function that a subsequent KMHA investigation ruled was not a team party. "But it was for the team, so don't tell me it wasn't for the team. This is so ridiculous. You had the whole team there, minus three (players)."

Late that night when Sturge's phone rang, she immediately knew that Maloski had a serious problem.

"She said, 'He's in and out. I don't know what to do with him,' " Sturge recounts. "I said, 'Monica, you've got to make sure he's in a recovery position.' And I said, 'If he's in and out, Monica, if he vomits, he can aspirate. He'll die, and you can't have that on your head. . . . You need to get him to an (emergency ward).'

"I said, 'Do you want me to come over there now?' She said, 'No, I'm calling 9-1-1.' I said, 'That's the best thing you can do, because if something happens to that boy, Monica, he's under your care.' "

The terror in Maloski's voice shook Sturge to her very core.

"She was just petrified," Sturge says. "He kept going in and out. . . . he'd wake up, throw up and then go back into a sleep where she couldn't get him out of it.

"You could just tell . . . Monica's a pretty cool cucumber but you can tell she was . . . what should I do?"

As Sturge, an excitable type, recounts that night's phone call and subsequent goings-on, she often is lost for words. Which is what happened when she read in The Daily News that Monica had appeared in front of a KMHA disciplinary committee and that, while she wasn't disciplined, she had received a letter reprimanding her.

"I just read where Monica got a warning. What did she get a warning for? Oh my gawd. . . I'm coming out of the phone here, I'm so angry," Sturge says. "I am so appalled at this type of behaviour. This is so wrong.

"Oh my gawd . . . my heart just bleeds . . . and they're reprimanding her?

"What can I do? Can I call Don Cherry? Should I e-mail him?"

Sturge pauses, perhaps to catch her breath. Then she continues and you know there's no interrupting her. . .

"I'm going to tell you about Monica Maloski. She has her own son . . . she has Ladd's son and Ladd's daughter . . . he shares his children with his previous wife . . . Monica is the most dedicated hockey mother you've ever seen . . . taking care of (the player in question) who isn't even her son. He was there because of the goodness and kindness of the Maloskis. The daughter is into soccer and gymnastics. Monica works as a full-time X-ray tech and she's running everywhere.

"And then she got this huge weight thrown on her shoulders with this nonsense going on. I could not believe the effort she put into caring for this kid . . . heart and soul. How dare they do this to her!"

Unlike many parents who have contacted The Daily News since late October, Sturge is not afraid to have her name appear in print. She is not afraid to stand up to the KMHA and say that what has transpired since Oct. 20 is horribly wrong.

She also feels the midget AAA players who were at the party should have been suspended. "Totally," she says. "And Stan Burton needs to be a man, stand up and say, 'I am resigning.'

"This is such a horrible message to these kids . . . that it's OK to do this. It's OK to drink and party. Some of those kids had cars. There were kids there who were old enough to drive. It didn't faze any of them."

As a mother whose son very well could have been subjected to the same treatment as was the player who ended up in hospital and as an RN who knows all too well the consequences of drinking and driving, Sturge shudders and cringes whenever she thinks of the night of Oct. 20 and its aftermath.

"I'm appalled," she says.

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.