HomeMailFlickrTumblrNewsSportsFinanceCelebrityAnswersGroupsMobileYahooSearchSkip to NavigationSkip to Main ContentSkip to Related Content0Mail•February 7, 201459-year-old Ged Hall of Hartlepool, UK is on the mend and doing well thanks to a stranger who saved his life.As reported by the Hartlepool Mail, last year on the morning of July 12, Ged suffered a brain clot and was drifting in and out of consciousness for a period of 36 hours. When I woke up, I was lying on the floor. I tried to get up and I couldn’t. I couldn’t shout or get to the door or anything,” said Ged. During a moment of consciousness, Ged managed to grab a telephone and dial, what he thought was his friend’s number. However, he accidentally called the number of Mary Readman, a perfect stranger.Mary answered her phone but only heard groans and unintelligible sounds. She thought the heavy breather on the other end of the line was a prankster. Ms. Readman recalled, “I was watching television and it was 9.45 p.m. on the Saturday night when the phone just went.
I thought it was a crank call but it was the way [Ged] put the receiver down that got me thinking, ‘Should I call the police?’” According to the Daily Mail, Mary said that it sounded like a land line phone and the caller was having difficulty getting it back on the hook. The perceptive stranger decided to call Ged back and heard more groans and no replies when she asked if the caller was ok.Readman decided to call the police, and that decision ended up saving Hall’s life. The officers traced the phone number to Ged Hall’s home. They broke down the door and found Ged laying on the ground unconscious. He was then transported to James Cook University Hospital, where he had immediate surgery and eventually three operations over his three-month stay.Mary told the Hartlepool Mail, “I don’t think I did anything remarkable, but the next thing I knew, the police left a message on my phone saying thank you and that they’d got to the address of the occupant who needed medical attention.”
Since the summer medical scare, Ged is doing much better and continues to improve. Recently he was able to meet his hero in person. “I owe you everything,” Mr. Hall told his rescuer. “I have made amazing progress in the last six months. They say I will get completely better within two years. That is down to you.”Video and more info: Hartlepool Mail, Daily MailPopular in the CommunityItems 1 to 60 of 299 Items 1 to 60 of 299 When NxStage Medical Inc. realized that Spanish-speaking people made up 15 percent of the market for its home kidney dialysis equipment, the Massachusetts company created a website and brochures printed in Spanish. NxStage, which started its marketing campaign to Hispanics a year ago, has also increased its staff of Spanish-speaking customer service agents. “If we’re doing our job in the community, 15 to 20 percent of our growth would come from the Hispanic population,” said CEO Jeff Burbank. There are about 55 million Hispanics in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau, which reported that Hispanics accounted for more than half the U.S. population growth from 2000-10.
By 2060, it expects that there will be 119 million Hispanics, making up nearly 29 percent of the population. Hispanics also have enormous buying power — $1.4 trillion, according to an estimate by market research company Nielsen. Companies are hiring celebrities, such as Sofia Vergara and Eva Longoria, to endorse their products. Some are offering products and services specifically for Hispanics, and are creating Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to reach Hispanic customers. Smart companies go beyond ad campaigns; they’re hiring Hispanic employees, said Cid Wilson, president of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, an organization trying to increase Hispanic employment in U.S. companies. “Companies that don’t embrace Hispanic inclusion run the risk of being labeled a company that does not embrace diversity, and they might make a mistake in how they market to our community,” Wilson said. But some companies haven’t yet caught on that marketing to ethnic groups is smart business.
In a survey of 150 marketing executives, 55 percent said they don’t have the support of their CEOs for multicultural marketing programs, and 60 percent said they don’t have the support of their boards of directors. Only 14 percent said a quarter or more of their budgets are devoted to multicultural marketing. The survey was released by the CMO Council, an association of marketing executives, and Geoscape, a consulting company. However, sensitivity to the Hispanic population led companies including Macy’s and Spanish-language TV network Univision to end their relationships with GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump after his comments about Mexican immigrants. “Hispanics are becoming a force by themselves,” says Jose Torres, a franchising consultant in Florida. “It would be foolish for any company to ignore that segment of the market.” Seeing opportunities: When Antonio Swad opened Pizza Pizza in a Hispanic section of Dallas in 1986, he quickly found his inability to speak Spanish made it hard to communicate with customers;
his background is Italian and Lebanese. Swad hired Spanish-speaking employees and began serving pizzas with ingredients like chorizo that his customers, many of them Mexican, liked. He renamed the business Pizza Patron, and word got around in the Hispanic community that it offered good service. “We were friendly, spoke Spanish and treated you with respect when you came in — it was an untapped market,” Swad said. In 1988, Swad opened a second store and in 2007 began accepting Mexican pesos as payment. Today the company has more than 100 locations, mostly in Texas and California. Underserved market: When Gilbert Cerda and Aaron Munoz formed their Los Angeles financial advisory firm, Cerda Munoz Advisors, in 2013, they focused on Hispanics. Many financial advisers cater to the wealthy and didn’t want to work with Hispanics who didn’t have a minimum net worth, Cerda said. Hispanics are starting to accumulate sizable nest eggs, he said. “Who better to provide the service than someone who speaks the language?”