Fairchild: One Year Later A Double Tragedy Father Suffered Heart Attack Same Day As Fairchild Killings

Today, Ray “Toby” Combs will wear his father’s baseball cap.

Last year on this day, Combs - the Airway Heights fire chief - responded to a call of a 60-year-old man suffering a heart attack at an Airway Heights tavern.

The man turned out to be Combs’ father. Combs and his brother, Doug Combs, a Spokane Ambulance emergency medical technician, helped give their father, Hobert Combs, more time to live.

Just as his father entered the intensive care unit, Toby Combs was called to Fairchild Air Force Base. A gunman went on a rampage, killing four people and wounding 22.

Combs becomes tearful when speaking of that day - it will always remind him of his father’s illness and the massacre at Fairchild.

“I still get choked up,” he said. “It kind of signaled the beginning of the end for my father.”

The Airway Heights Fire Department won a regional EMS Council award for its work last June 20 at Fairchild and for helping save the life of Hobert Combs. It was the first such award for the mostly volunteer department.

When Combs heard the call of a man suffering a heart attack at Little Joes Tavern, he thought of his father, who played pinochle at the bar.

“As soon as I heard the call, I knew it was my dad,” Combs said. “I came into the tavern and recognized his boots. He was laying on the floor.”

Hobert Combs’ face was purple, he wasn’t breathing and his eyes had rolled back in his head.

Toby Combs and other Airway Heights firefighters put him on a heart monitor, then tried to get his heart pumping again.

As others continued working on his father, Combs went outside and saw that his brother had pulled up in an ambulance.

Doug Combs also suspected his father would be the patient.

“When I heard the radio traffic and heard my brother excited on the radio, I knew it had to be him,” Doug Combs said.

By that time, Hobert Combs began breathing again. His sense of humor also returned.

“I can still remember someone asking him, ‘Do you know where you are?’ and he said, ‘Of course. I’m right here,”’ Toby Combs said.

After Hobert Combs was flown to Deaconess Medical Center, both brothers watched their father go from the emergency room to the intensive care unit.

Then, Toby Combs received a page dispatching him to Fairchild.

“I’m thinking, ‘Now, I’ve got to play fire chief again,”’ he said.

Combs met with several firefighters who had come to the hospital to give him support and they took off to the base.

They were among the first emergency workers on the scene. Combs helped set up a landing zone for medical helicopters.

He said he coped with the chaotic situation by keeping his focus, even amid reports that two gunmen were on the loose. Authorities learned later that only Dean Mellberg, who was shot by a military police officer, was responsible for the shootings.

“I was getting really wrapped up in what was going on,” Combs said.

Hobert Combs was able to move home after the heart attack. But less than two months later, he died. His heart couldn’t take any more.

Toby Combs found his father’s Odessa Cenex cap under a table at Little Joes.

As many people remember the Fairchild shooting victims, Toby Combs will put on the cap and think of his dad.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo