It must be the same for take-charge, organized people like the woman in that story

Equally dazzled by her skills was Dunford, the city medical director and a professor of emergency medicine at UCSD.

He said Pugh created a “state-of-the-art nursing home” in the stadium, interacted superbly with patients and doctors, and oversaw but never administered medicine, to his knowledge. She stayed to the very end, he said.

“She did tell me she was a firefighting nurse, but I never questioned her credentials,” he said, “because she was sharp, really sharp. You had to be there to know what was going on, and she was absolutely fabulous. If she wasn’t a nurse, I say: So what?”

Robert Drury, a Rancho Bernardo resident I met while he was under Pugh’s care, had the same reaction.

Once, when Pugh was away sleeping for a few hours, the place fell into disarray, he said. “There was a vacuum, a lacuna if you will, a void in leadership when she was gone,” he said.

When I first contacted [firechief] Loyd, he answered my question about Pugh with one of his own: “Is she doing something good or doing something bad?”

I’m still not sure how to answer that.

Happy 23rd birthday to my future daughter-in-law!

And remind her that she did not think this was funny … not one bit, a few years ago. I guess our sense of irony progresses with our sense of humor.

Our own pumpkin carvers opted for smilin’ surfer dude and alien from outer space…the classics.

Happy Halloween!