Ronald R. Robertson died after helping to save an indeterminate number of persons from assault, Anaheim, California, September 14, 1999. A 43-year-old man armed with two revolvers entered a hospital and shot and killed two employees on the second floor. On the first floor, Robertson, 50, the hospital’s environmental services director, was responding to the emergency alert when, nearing the stairs, he heard gunfire and identified it as such to a coworker. Robertson encountered the assailant and struggled against him in the corridor leading from the vicinity of the stairs to the hospital lobby. The assailant shot him repeatedly. Another hospital employee on the first floor heard gunfire then responded to the corridor and saw Robertson and the assailant struggling. That employee ran to them and, seizing the assailant, took him to the floor, where he detained him, with help from another man, until police arrived shortly. Robertson died of his gunshot wounds.
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73934-8704Obituary
Some have called Ron Robertson a hero. He would have shrugged it off. A gunman entered his workplace, West Anaheim Medical Center, on Sept. 14, 1999, and Robertson threw himself on him to try to stop the violence. He gave up his own life to save those of others.
That, he would have said, is what people are supposed to do — take care of each other. The Fullerton, Calif., man did more than his share in his 50 years.
He was a quiet man — not shy, just low-key. He was gentle, conscientious, the kind who did what was put before him, then looked around to see how else he might help out. And he was crazy about kids.
Born on Oct. 19, 1948, he grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., a tall, lanky kid who loved sports, especially baseball. He thought he might be a pilot. Or a pro ballplayer. But he was drafted by the Army right out of high school and suffered wounds in Vietnam that grounded both those hopes.
A gunner in the 101st Airborne helicopter division, he was shot down twice, and injured in the abdomen, arm, and one eye. As his wounds healed, he was trained in hospital maintenance. He became environmental services director at Santa Monica Hospital in 1975, where Suzanne Hartigan was beginning her nursing career. They were married in 1981.
Like most vets, Robertson didn’t talk about the war. But when he and his wife moved to Fullerton, he joined the American Legion post in Placentia.
(Edited from an obituary published in The Orange County Register on Sept. 19, 1999.)