As fate would have it, I had a visit last week from Grant Gegwich. He's the new vice president of public relations and marketing at Crozer Keystone Health System.
Crozer just happens to be the county's largest employer, with more than 6,800 employees. That makes them pretty important in this county, and certainly very important to us.
Grant wanted to stop in and formally introduce himself, even though we've worked with him for years. He's new as the top dog. We had a great conversation, with him suggesting some items we might want to develop in terms of stories, and us letting him know of our needs in terms of information, especially at nights and on weekends, when staffing is reduced.
Of course, the linchpin of the Crozer system is Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland.
As is almost always the case with businesses in the county, inevitably we will end up calling them under circumstances that are not the best. This happens routinely at Crozer. Their Burn Center is nationally renowned. It is not unusual for serious burn victims from all across the region to wind up there.
Toward the end of the meeting, Grant mentioned a recent story that his bosses were less than thrilled with. It involved a shooting that occurred outside the medical center in the parking lot. They believed our coverage painted Crozer unnecessarily in a bad light.
I immediately thought of that conversation as I was driving into the office early Tuesday and heard the news that a woman - a patient at Crozer - had been wounded by a stray bullet that came from outside the hospital.
That's one of the reasons I was glad that District Attorney Jack Whelan decided to have a press conference outside the hospital later in the morning. Whelan stressed that this was a fluke, a most unusual incident for what is in fact a very safe facility.
He stressed that they had no reason to believe that either the woman or the hospital had been targeted. Instead, the most likely culprit was random gunfire that could have come from as far as a mile away.
Investigators continue to probe the surrounding neighborhoods as they try to determine where those shots came from.
Luckily, the woman who was wounded was not seriously injured. She was treated and is expected to make a full recovery.
We will continue to cover Crozer. We will tell you of the many great things that are happening there.
And, of course, when a patient is wounded by a stray bullet.
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