Saturday, December 27, 2003 · Last updated 12:46 p.m. PT
Pilot who made heroic crash-landing now tries to save daughter
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATAC, Wash. -- More than a decade ago, Capt. Al Haynes saved 185 lives when he crash-landed a DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa, after its center engine exploded.
Now he's trying to save one more.
His daughter, Laurie Haynes Arguello, has aplastic anemia, a condition in which her bone marrow cannot produce enough white or red blood cells. She needs a marrow transplant, and although she has a donor lined up, she doesn't have the $156,000 that her insurance will not pay.
So she and her dad, accompanied by 25 of their friends, have started raising money. In two weeks they have raised more than $30,000, much of it from Haynes' associates in the Airline Pilots Association and the Association of Flight Attendants.
"My wife died in 1999, my oldest son was killed in a motorcycle crash (in 1997), and now this is coming up with my daughter," he said. "So we're having our share of bad luck; but we learned a long time ago that it doesn't do you any good to cry about it. You just do what you can and deal with what you have."
Haynes was the pilot of United Airlines Flight 232 when its engine burst on July 19, 1989. Haynes had almost no control, but he and others in the cockpit managed to divert the plane to Sioux City and crash-land it using only its throttles. Of the 292 people on board, 185 survived.
Arguello, 39, was diagnosed with the disorder in December 2001. A form of chemotherapy called ATG, for antithymocyte globulin, reduced her symptoms for nine months, leading to some hope the condition had been cured.
It hadn't, which meant a transplant was her only option. She went through another session of ATG anyway.
"We hoped it would hold me out until we could collect the deposit," said Arguello, who has a 9-year-old son.
By "deposit," she means the $256,000 in all the operation would cost. Her insurance, through Washington state, covers $100,000.
And even after that, follow-up visits and anti-rejection drugs will likely cost at least another $100,000. For that reason, Haynes and Arguello are trying to raise $250,000.
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Editors: To make a donation, go to
www.friendsforlauri.com or write to the National Foundation for Transplants in behalf of Laurie Arguello:
NFT for Laurie Arguello
P.O. Box 7781
Covington, WA 98042
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...lug=WA%20Pilot's%20Daughter