W E ST O RA N G E T I M E S &
Observer Celebrating 110 years in West Orange
Meet the West Orange Chamber of Commerce’s new chairman. PAGE 6
YOU. YOUR NEIGHBORS. YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
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VOLUME 84, NO. 1
YOUR TOWN OCOEE TO ISSUE COMMUNITY GRANTS Beginning this week, the city of Ocoee’s Community Grant applications will be available online at ocoee.org. Residents may also pick up an application at City Hall, 150 N. Lakeshore Drive. The deadline to submit applications is Jan. 31. The Community Grant program provides financial grants of up to $500. There is $5,000 available for this grant cycle. Eligible groups are Ocoee nonprofit organizations and civic groups. In addition, nonprofit organizations and civic groups outside the city limits, which benefit residents of Ocoee, are also qualified to apply for a grant. The city awards the grants to acknowledge excellence and to further the contributions these local organizations bring to the Ocoee community. Completed applications should be mailed or delivered to City Hall. For information, call (407) 905-3100.
NEW YEAR, NEW EXHIBIT
To kick off the new year, SoBo Gallery will open a new exhibit for the month of January called All Mixed Up. The exhibit features artwork in all subjects that uses more than one medium, including collage, assemblage and sculpture. The featured artist is Christine Peloquin. The exhibit will run until Jan. 28. The SoBo Gallery is at 127 N. Boyd St., Winter Garden.
AN EVENING OF RECOLLECTIONS History comes alive when people who lived it share their stories. Jerry Chicone Jr. and Larry Grimes, both Winter Garden natives and good friends for many decades, have gathered quite a collection of tales and memories. Hear them share their stories of West Orange County’s past at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, at the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation, 21 E. Plant St., Winter Garden. Seating is limited. RSVP to Jim Crescitelli at jcrescitelli@ wghf.org or call (407) 6563244.
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 2017
FORECAST EDITION
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Stories to watch in 2017 From a new county commissioner to the strategy to handle growth in Oakland and the progress of a massive development in Ocoee, 2017 promises to be a memorable year for West Orange.
STORIES BEGIN ON PAGE 3
Ocoee police officer receives life-saving award A life-saving tactic he learned while responding to the Pulse shooting June 12 helped Ocoee police Officer Nathan Coch save a gunshot victim’s life on Aug. 17. GABBY BAQUERO STAFF WRITER OCOEE It was around three in the morning. The parking lot of the Oak Forest apartment complex was dark. Nathan Coch, an Ocoee police officer, was one of the first officers who responded to the scene, where neighbors reported gunshots. Upon arrival, Coch was called over by his fellow officers to a location where a man sat on a curb slowly rocking back and forth. There was blood everywhere; the man had multiple gunshots wounds. One bullet had penetrated a lung, making its way straight through his chest and out his back. The hole was larger than a nickel. Given what they’d learned in routine police training, Coch and everyone surrounding him realized what that meant. It was a sucking chest wound — a dangerous, complicated injury that can kill most within 10 minutes. With this type of injury, the lung breathes from the path of least resistance — the wound itself. Knowing they only had minutes before it would be too late, Coch went to work doing what he could to help save the man’s life. Proper occlusive dressing — a type of dressing that uses a waxy coat rather than an absorbent gauze pad to create an air-tight seal — was unavailable. So, he used a tactic he learned while attending to victims in the Pulse tragedy that uses AED pads to seal sucking chest wounds. “I learned it at Pulse. Probably, like four or five people into it, we ran out of occlusive dress-
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