Holger Salazar Faces of Good Health
In 2005, gunfire nearly ended Dr. Holger Salazar’s American dream.
The place was Tulane University Hospital, a few days after hurricane Katrina famously broke the New Orleans levees. With no power, the hospital’s pharmacy was an attractive target for looters, who began a days-long gun battle with hospital police. Inside, Salazar tried to ignore the gunfire, maintain his sanity, keep his wife and young son safe and keep his patients alive.“We could hear the gunshots all the time;” Salazar remembers. “And I couldn’t just stay with [my family] all the time, I had patients to take care of, so I just told them to stay away from the windows and stay in one place.”
Fortunately, life isn’t always so stressful for the 47-year-old cardiologist. Salazar now works at the swanky Stern Cardiovascular Center in Germantown, a place traditionally devoid of looters and gunfire. The Ecuadorian-born doctor is lean but not lanky, rigid but not stiff. His collected demeanor, professorial attention to detail and South American accent give his speech the rhythmic regularity of a healthy heartbeat.The consistent rhythm belies the severity of his situation as he describes the incidents surrounding the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.“I remember it clearly,” he says. “I was on call so I had to go into the hospital and, of course, stay in the hospital. I had my son and my wife, already had tickets for them so they could leave but she didn’t want to leave.” He repeats the last sentence. “She… didn’t WANT to leave.”
Salazar’s wife and son went to the grocery store for supplies, and then came to the hospital to hunker down until the hurricane arrived the next morning. When that did happen, the early results looked promising. “Nothing really seemed to be happening,” he remembers of the storm itself. “There were some winds but they were not bad winds; there were some windows that appeared to be broken in some buildings in the surrounding areas, but nothing else than that. Then all of a sudden, everything was gone and everybody was happy and no problems.”