The Los Banos Memorial Hospital has been given a major boost in its ability to treat patients undergoing surgery through a recent donation from a local benefactor, say hospital spokespersons.
The $50,000 bequest, given by long-time Los Banos resident, entrepreneur and developer Greg Hostetler, will enable the hospital to purchase much-needed equipment for its surgical wing.
“These monies will go toward the hospital’s Surgical Services operating department,” Michelle Munden, Memorial Hospital’s Program Manager said. “The hospital administration has allocated proceeds from the donation to go toward a specific piece of equipment that helps the operating department expand its ability to treat patients undergoing surgery.”
“The money will make it possible for the hospital to purchase another anesthesia machine,” Munden said, “which is a specialized piece of equipment anesthesiologists use to monitor patients during surgery.”
Munden also credited Hostetler for supporting the hospital in making his donation.
“The administrative team allocated the donation for the purchase,” Munden said, “and we are grateful for the donation from Greg and his [late] wife Cathie Hostetler that enables us to do so.”
For his part, Hostetler, who comes from a long life’s history of making philanthropic gifts locally, regionally, nationally and throughout California, said his reason for making the donation in large part was personal.
“I’d been thinking, ‘I’m going to donate something to the hospital,'” Hostetler said. “And I remembered a long time ago when I had a life-threatening situation and got such good care at the ER there.
“I did a walk-in after a toxic bee sting I got while I was out farming,” he said. “My throat started swelling shut, my tongue and my face were swelling; I got hives all over; and I could barely breathe–it was scary. But the ER receptionist and staff, all of them–they just jumped right in and almost immediately got me stabilized. Without them, I might not have made it.”
Hostetler’s donation was made in part through the Cathie Hostetler Foundation, founded by Hostetler’s late wife, Cathie, who died in 2010 after a long struggle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).
Hostetler and the foundation through major philanthropic donations have supported numerous state and regional organizations, including an endowment to Merced County’s Spring Fair in Los Banos, a contribution to expand the gymnasium at the University of California Merced, and, in 2014, another grant of 8.3 acres of land that enabled a long-term football field project at Merced High School to go forward. Inaugurated in 2022, the high school named the field Cathie Hostetler Stadium in honor of Cathie Hostetler as benefactor.
Memorial Hospital in part serves a widespread rural population and is the only hospital facility in its region’s 35-square-mile area.
To meet the challenge of being the only facility in the area, Memorial Hospital often relies on a state-of-the-art telemedicine system that enables it to serve critical-care patients.
Called Telemedicine ICU, the system consists of multiple communication hubs connected to a regional grid of intensive care doctors, ER personnel and nurses intervening in emergent patient care scenarios.
Memorial Hospital’s parent organization, Sutter Health, recently inaugurated its own Telemedicine ICU program, one of the first health organizations nationally to do so.
The Telemedicine ICU capability at Memorial proved especially valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Memorial also recently was recognized by the American Heart Association for its participation in the association’s “Get with the Guidelines” program that strives to enhance care for patients presenting with stroke, or those with heart disease–among eight other Valley hospitals to be recognized.
About the Donor
Los Banos developer Greg Hostetler said he credits his success in life and in commerce in large part to that mysterious quality called “luck.”
He’d been a middling student in his early years, he said, finding school “boring,” and at a young age immediately began to seek out other avenues of knowledge that could teach him the things he really wanted to know.
“It seemed like all the teachers did then was stand in front of the class and read to us from a book,” Hostetler said. “After a while, I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and I was out of there.”
He left school, he said, and started wandering around the region and town, talking to local businesses,
watching other occupations, looking for something to do.
“I got a farmer to teach me how to drive a tractor, how to farm,” he continued. “But then I had to find some way to buy my own tractor. Finally, I did–and I started farming, working every day, all day long.”
He went on to grow almonds, pistachios, raisin grapes, pima cotton and other regional crops, he said. Another pathway then opened up.
“While I was out farming, a couple of neighbors who were getting on in age saw me and asked me if I would farm their land for them,” he recounted, “and that opened the door for a lucky chance.”
While working his neighbors’ fields and his, Hostetler noticed a tract of land that was up for sale, and made an adventurous move to try and acquire it.
“I tried to find a way to buy that land under my financial circumstances at the time,” he said. “And I finally was able to get financed and went on and bought it.”
At every opportunity, Hostetler said, he immediately set to work, with increasing enjoyment.
“I was never one to watch the clock,” he said. “When I was driving trucks, I could’ve driven all day–I could drive a tractor all day long. I like work.”
Hostetler said his time as a farmer eventually moved him into lifelong ventures as a developer–buying land and other properties and building houses.
That’s the luck part.
“Found a way” seems to be Hostetler’s go-to methodology for getting what you need. That, and being in the right place at the right time, not squandering the opportunity.
Yes, well. But is it luck, after all?
Anyone in Hostetler’s general vicinity in the wake of the energy he marshals for everything he’s involved in can witness the power of an American entrepreneur.
A survivor of childhood lymphatic cancer, successful open heart surgery decades later, and the potentially fatal anaphylactic shock from a bee sting, Hostetler said he’s been lucky–and vows that everyone can, and should, “do what they want to do, and not what other people tell them they should do.”
He hastened to add anyone with sufficient will can do what he has done.
“You have to put yourself in a position to win–or to lose,” he said. “And work from there. Then, when you succeed, you give.” He stressed his pleasure in his success is equal to that of his philanthropic outreach now in his later years.
“My wife and I enjoyed giving. And I still do.”
