A 66-year-old man suffered a medical emergency Monday at his apartment on the seventh floor of Bellevue Towers.
But when the ambulance arrived at the high-rise near Reservoir Park, paramedics couldn't use the elevator to reach him. It was broken.
So the paramedics hiked up six floors with a special patient transfer chair, put the man into the chair and carried him down six floors to the waiting ambulance.
After the man was checked out of the hospital later, his daughter drove him home, only to realize she had no way of getting him back upstairs to his apartment. So she called paramedics again to the building at 2400 Market Street who used the "stair chair" to carry him back up six flights.
"I didn't realize how much we depended on that elevator until we couldn't use it," said the daughter, who didn't want her name published.