Letters for March 25, 2022

Ric Odegard’s legacy

After reading Ed Clark’s letter (“Odegard saved Spokane’s tourism industry,” March 13) about Ric Odegard’s impact on the Spokane visitor and convention business, I am moved to mention another arena he influenced: care for abused and neglected children and their families.

In 1994, the Casey Family Program, a foundation headquartered in Seattle, asked Ric and Mari Clack to help represent them (and their investment of $500,000 per year for five years) in a collaborative venture with Inland NW Health Services.

Law enforcement and Child Protective Services would refer to Casey Family Partners children whose injuries likely met the standard of a criminal act. Expert medical services would be delivered in a child-friendly environment, with a multidisciplinary team organized to do “whatever it takes” for those children and their family members. The goal: to begin the healing for that individual child, to address all aspects of their families’ needs, and to pursue justice in the courts for that child and others like him or her.

Ric’s compassion and leadership set the tone for developing this unique, comprehensive approach to families.

The board met at 7 a.m. Ric always arrived early and in those 15-20 minutes, he tutored me in the art of herding diverse partners to pursue a common goal. He led by example, he always took the high road, he was humble but forceful.

Ric Odegard has been and will continue to be heralded for his many contributions to the business sector of our community. I will always cherish what he taught me and what he accomplished for the children.

Mary Ann Murphy

Spokane

Kyle Varner

I read with frustration the account of Dr. Kyle Varner’s trip to the Ukraine to provide medical assistance and his stated hope that this would encourage other doctors to do the same. Self-deployment is exactly what humanitarian relief organizations plead with volunteers NOT to do.

There are numerous international organizations on site, coordinated by the U.N. Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, including the International Red Cross/Red Crescent, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and many other well-established groups sanctioned by the World Health Organization as qualified to navigate the complexities of providing aid to victims of war and national disasters.

Showing up in a crisis zone, no matter how well meaning, burdens a carefully orchestrated system designed to provide the care needed in that specific region without duplicating effort. Medical personnel are carefully vetted to ensure that they are qualified for that specific need and the logistics of credentialing, etc., are already negotiated. A well-meaning volunteer, particularly one who doesn’t know the language, is not familiar with local laws and customs and has no means of feeding or housing themselves becomes a liability and a burden.

As it happened, Dr. Varner’s lack of credentialing rendered him unable to provide assistance in Poland, his efforts in Lviv were not needed and his friend’s mistake in photographing a street sign could have resulted in arrest by the Russian military, or worse. They became one of the hundreds of thousands fleeing Ukraine. Dr. Varner’s actions were well intentioned and good hearted, but misguided. Please, if you wish to volunteer to help, do so through the proper channels. In the shorter term may I suggest donations to the World Food Program; they oversee a great number of relief efforts including those of medical teams and are currently directing all donations to Ukraine missions.

Susan J. Alexander, M.D., F.A.C.C.

Spokane

Idaho death penalty drugs

I recently attended a lecture in which there was a lot of talk about drug deaths. Then in today’s paper were two articles about drug deaths. One was about the state of Idaho wanting to make it easier to put criminals to death, which seems to be hard to do because of both supply of drugs and not a 100% success rate (“Idaho Senate passes bill to boost secrecy on execution drugs,” March 20).

The other story is a tragic one about two students dying from fentanyl overdose (“They poisoned my baby,” March 20). If it is so easy to buy fentanyl and die from its use, why doesn’t Idaho go on the streets of Boise, buy some fentanyl (or make it themselves) and administer a fatal dose? It can’t possibly be any more painful for the prisoner to die from a fentanyl overdose than it is to die from the drug cocktail now in use.

Myron Molnau

Spokane