The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 17

MetroRegion News Bl-8 Lottery B2 New England News Briefs B7 Deaths B6 Weather B8 THE BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1996 Police City cuts cardiac arrest fatalities iquamMHamii I This is not a pretty picture By GeetaAnand GLOBE STAFF question mother 3d time High-tech equipment ups victims' chances handbag-sized device called a Semi-Auto-matic External Defibrillator. By buying dozens of the devices and training Emergency Medical Services teams and firefighters to use them, the city of Boston has dramatically increased the rate at which people survive cardiac arrest, according to a study released yes terday. The survival rate in Boston has risen by 50 percent from 1994, when Boston instituted a program for training firefighters, often the first to respond to medical emergencies, to use defibrillators. Thirty fire engines are now equipped with the devices. Last year, 24 percent of those who suffered cardiac arrest outside of a hospital in Boston survived.

In 1994, only 16 percent made it, according to a study by Boston EMS. Nationally, only 5 percent of victims CARDIAC ARREST, Page B8 As Richard Delahanty was leaving a hockey game at the Fleet Center Feb. 5, his heart stopped beating. But yesterday, he stood before a small crowd and explained why he was one of a growing number of Bostonians to survive cardiac arrest. He is still alive, the 49-year-old Allston man said, because emergency workers reached his side within minutes and gave his heart three electrical shocks using a No theory points RIDING ACROSS EAST-ern Massachusetts, it is easy to see one of two big reasons why this presidential election was over before it began: The number of kitchens and bathrooms being added to existing homes in town after town.

Nobody is going to fire Clinton when the economy of way to Lynn boy yet By Kevin Cullen and Ric Kahn GLOBE STAFF Kindness put magic in a flute LYNN Police yesterday questioned the mother of missing 6-year-old Jesus De La Cruz for the third time in four days, but authorities said they still do not have strong evidence that the boy was abducted in a drug dispute or that he was kidnapped by a loner. Those two theories have received the most attention as the wide-ranging search for the boy enters its 10th day. A 26-year-old drifter, Robert Levesque, allegedly was the last person seen with the child and is the only suspect to be publicly named in the case. Levesque is being held on $10,000 bail on an unrelated charge. Authorities want to give Levesque a lie detector test, but it was unclear yesterday whether he or his attorney would consent to one.

Meanwhile, the boy's mother, Magdalena Rodriguez, once again answered questions at the Lynn police station. After the interview with police, she was hustled out in a police van to avoid reporters. Rodriguez's lawyer, Michael MacDonald, said his client requested the meeting to discuss "her concerns and her fears and some of the objections she had to the nature of the investigation." During the three-hour session, MacDonald said, police questioned Rodriguez about people who had associated with her family in the past The lawyer declined to discuss specifics. However, MacDonald said, police told him yesterday that the investigation is not focused on drugs. MacDonald also said authorities have not produced any evidence of a ransom note or threat.

Rodriguez failed a polygraph test on Friday, but authorities say the results may have been linked to anxiety over questions of drug involvement. Rodriguez has denied any links to the drug trade, but authorities remain concerned about her forthrightness in their interviews with her. "It's her kid's life at stake here, and she's not being straight with us," one investigator said yesterday. Officials point to conflicting reports from Rodriguez concerning her whereabouts on the night of Sept. 28, when Jesus was last seen, sources said.

Her son was allegedly seen with Levesque about 7 p.m., but Rodriguez did not report him missing until after midnight. Investigators are pursuing the possibility that Jesus is being held on orders of New York-based Colombians who had him kidnapped as leverage to settle a drug debt, said a source familiar with the investigation. MISSING, Page B5 fers enough solace to so many with the confidence to retain a builder. It's as if the voice of the electorate is saying: "He hasn't screwed up that badly, so he can stay." The other reason took place Sunday night when Bob Dole, a good man wrapped in a sad campaign, caused such anxiety that millions felt relieved whenever he came up with a verb to complete a whole sentence. It was as if Clinton were starring in a movie called "Driving Mr.

Dole." The retired Kansas senator stood there, sometimes mumbling, always gracious, his thoughts falling off the edge of a time-imposed cliff, and the whole scene was like taking dear old dad for a ride in the country on a beautiful fall afternoon, giving him one last look at the leaves along with a chance to ramble incoherently about whatever. Think about it: Dole kept referring to votes made in 1965 and things that happened in 1945. He did this while the other guy spoke about 2005. As Miss Dowd of the New York Times wisely observed, this race is between an incumbent who means nothing he says and a challenger with nothing to say. It is not a pretty picture.

Bob Dole attracted some affection Sunday, but that's not what he has to pick up. The man needs votes, and there are none to be had in a country currently operating in a comfort zone that is both unreal and barely defined. There are no wars collaring kids out of high school and using them as cannon fodder in some distant place. There are no big-time foriegn threats from Russia or anywhere else. There is no recession, no crash on the horizon, only acquisitions and mergers that swallow huge numbers whole, but even that horrific bite doesn't damage the economic product and, in many cases, actually causes profits to be made by the few who forever capitalize on the misfortune of the many.

Dole might be the better man. He might be more truthful, stronger, the guy with character and the courage of his convictions. But he's also the nowhere man. He aged before our eyes Sunday, became less glib with each passing minute up against the perpetual candidate, Clinton. The president is an interesting fellow; smart, too.

But he clearly is also a guy who needs a campaign to survive. Never great at governing, he throws himself onto the stump, gaining energy, emotion and strength from the physical act of shaking a hand, moving through a crowd, giving a speech. But what are the speeches about? Race? No. The state of public education in America? Hardly. The employment future for 43-year-old professionals suddenly tossed to the street when their company disappears? Uh-uh.

Most often it is about cigarettes, dirty movies, school uniforms, curfews and the death penalty. Those are some of the "critical" issues discussed by the leader of the free world. And guess what? In this, the last presidential election prior to the turn of the 20th Century, the candidates of both major parties have stolen politics from us. In terms of what is being said and the impact these words have on voters, more people are disengaged from this contest than any other since 1964. Thirty-two years ago, Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson.

An advertising guy in New York by the name of Tony Schwartz sat one day in his office and came up with a commercial depicting a little girl gathering flowers in a field as a voice-over counted down from 10 and the TV screen suddenly filled with the sight of a mushroom cloud. Goodby, Barry. After that, nobody cared about the election because everybody figured Johnson was golden. Very few paid attention to what was being said, and hardly anyone inspected the horizon where Vietnam loomed larger than life itself. Now, years later, we have another romp and even more voters tuning out, disinterested because we figure there's nothing to fear and the family room will be completed by Christmas.

Once again, we are so obsessed with the present, and so immersed in instant gratification, that we don't want to hear about reality, potential pain or sacrifice. And because this election is over, we won't hear it, either, until bad news is on the doorstep. GLOBE STAFF PHOTOS DAVID RYAN Dr. Albert E. Sloane plays his flute, which bears the signature of its creator (top photo), the late BSO flutist and instrument maker Verne Q.

Powell. Because of the signature, the woodwind is worth an estimated $10,000. Musician paid doctor in silver, and more By Cheryl de Jong GLOBE CORRESPONDENT flute as they did any other musical instrument playing it for fun, alone and with friends. It wasn't until this year when Sloane, age 89, considered selling the flute that he discovered its true value. The flute, it turns out, is the only musical instrument ever signed by Powell.

And that makes it unique, according to Steven Wasser, president of Powell Flutes in Waltham, which was founded by the now-deceased maestro. "I didn't know Powell signed any flutes," said Wasser, whose company continues to manufacture flutes played in top-flight symphonies around the world. "Dr. Sloane's flute is not neces- FLUTE, Page B5 BROOKLINE The overture began five decades ago, but did not reach a crescendo until the discovery this year of a one-of-a-kind, world-class flute. In 1951, Dr.

Albert E. Sloane, a Brookline ophthalmologist, happened to administer emergency eye care to Verne Q. Powell, a flutist and famous maker of the wind instrument. Some time later, the physician received a silver flute crafted and signed by Powell. For the next 40-odd years, Sloane and his family treated the 'I just wanted my pain to end.

But Vm glad I'm still alive. I know now that if I ever see my self falling into that darkness, I can do something positive to get myself out. ROSE WINAND After despair, many surviving and thriving By Doreen Iudica Vigue GLOBE STAFF More Metro News MBTA harass case: A five-year veteran of the MBTA Police Department has charged that his boss, Chief John O'Donovan, attempted to obstruct justice in an internal sexual harassment case by discouraging the officer from testifying. Page B2. Attack ad: One of the newest offerings in the US Senate campaign TV ad wars features locked-out union workers complaining about a Republican candidate who doesn't care about them.

Page B4. newed enthusiasm for life is familiar to the tens of thousands of Americans who try to kill themselves each year, both suicide specialists and survivors said. While assisted suicides of the terminally ill often generate public empathy, suicides that appear to stem from mental illnesses such as depression do not, specialists said. That kind of bias may be due to the erroneous impression that depression is a matter of willpower, when, in fact, it is most often caused by a biochemical imbalance of the SURVIVAL, Page B8 Friends found her minutes later. After weeks of treatment, she left the hospital with a shattered vertebra, damaged spinal nerves and a wheelchair.

She faced months of reha-. bilitation. "I just wanted my pain to end," said Winand, who works in fund-raising for a major Boston hospital. "But I'm glad I'm still alive. I know now that if I ever see myself falling into that darkness, I can do something positive to get myself out." Winand's journey through tH depths of depression to a brush with death to a re BROOKLINE Rose Winand believes shell be the woman who wins the wheelchair division at the 1997 Boston Marathon.

She's training hard, preparing her body and mind to cross the finish line first But once, all Winand believed about herself was that she should die. In the winter of 1984, after years of battling depression, she shot herself in the abdomen and waited to die..