Santa gets chance to meet his lifesaver

When Santa Claus visited the Bootlegger Bistro in August, he got his throat slit.

On Sunday the jolly old man, this time wearing his beloved red suit, came back to say thank you.

"Some people may think it's strange that I'm happy I got my throat slit, but if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here now," he said, standing in the section of the eatery on Las Vegas Boulevard South where he almost died, where his blood pooled on the floor.

There was a twinkle in his eye as he held Mrs. Claus' hand and a bag of gifts.

"I've really been looking forward to meeting the doctor who cut my throat," he said, grinning. "I've never got to meet him."

It was Aug. 18 when John Adams, a husky, white-bearded, federal employee from Barstow who has long enjoyed playing Santa in California and Nevada at Christmastime, started choking on a piece of bread.

"After I fell to the floor, I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital," Adams said.

How his life was saved -- first reported in the Review-Journal on Aug. 20 -- became a story that drew worldwide attention.

"All of a sudden, Santa started coughing and motioning like he couldn't breathe," recalled Denise Adams, who calls her husband Santa not only because of the striking resemblance and his work with children but because "he's just such a good man."

Attempts by family and restaurant employee Vito Marinelli to get Adams breathing through the Heimlich maneuver seemed to make him choke even more. He fell limply to the floor, unconscious.

A restaurant employee who knew there was a doctor in the house brought Dr. Michael Colletti, the 60-year-old former president of the Clark County Medical Society, to where Adams was turning blue.

Though he is a rheumatologist -- a specialist in the nonsurgical treatment of illnesses such as arthritis -- Colletti immediately asked for a knife.

The knife he received was great for cutting steak, and Colletti prayed it would also work for a cricothyroidotomy, a procedure that provides a temporary emergency airway in situations where there is an obstruction at or above the level of the larynx.

After Adams met Colletti and thanked him on Sunday, the doctor noted that in August, the darkness in the room -- which makes for romantic dinners -- made it difficult to cut without damaging vital anatomy.

"Your beard was so long and it was so dark, I basically had to cut by feel," Colletti told Adams. "And remember, I had never done one of these before -- I had just studied about it in medical school."

Once he sliced open Adams' neck, Colletti asked his lady love, Erica Raley, to get him a drinking straw. After she did and Colletti inserted it in the cut, Santa, or rather Adams, began to breathe.

"Blood was everywhere," Colletti recalled.

Though Adams had read months ago about what Colletti had done, he said hearing it from the doctor himself made him all the more thankful.

"It's just amazing to be with someone who saved your life like that," he said. "You don't know what to say. It's like thank you isn't enough. Someone up above had to be guiding his hand when he made the cut. If he just missed by a little bit, I may not be talking to you right now."

Dr. Scott Manthei, who did further surgery on Adams after he arrived at the St. Rose Dominican Hospital, Siena campus, also was on hand Sunday at the restaurant. With his wife, Dr. Darlina Manthei, by his side, he told Adams that he had never before seen an emergency surgery done in the field as cleanly as Colletti's.

Ten days after Colletti's cut, Adams, who retired as a sergeant first class after 20 years in the Army, began speaking again in a strong baritone. When the Review-Journal visited him in the hospital right after Colletti's life-saving procedure, a tube in his throat would only permit him to use hand gestures. He gave the thumbs up sign when asked how he was feeling.

Now a federal maintenance analyst who often performs as Santa for children at Fort Irwin in California, Adams wondered aloud if many other doctors would have acted as Colletti did.

"You tend to think that many of them wouldn't do it unless they had a release saying you wouldn't sue for malpractice if something went wrong," he said.

To both Colletti and Manthei, Adams and his wife wrote a note thanking them for their professionalism. And each physician received a photograph of Santa with a "thank you" inscription.

"This is going right up in my waiting room," Colletti said. "There aren't many physicians who can say they got an inscribed thank you from Santa Claus himself."

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@
reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.