NECESSITY IS MOTHER OF MEDICAL BRACELET.

Byline: Jeff Jardine Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

It began as a way to save their teen-age daughter's life.

Dr. Marion Collins and his wife, Chrissie, were scared and frustrated when Linda nearly died from a reaction to a tetanus antitoxin in the mid-1950s. The Turlock residents looked for a way to warn doctors of her condition before they tried to treat her in an emergency.

First, they tried a piece of paper bearing her medical information, but found it neither durable nor practical. Then Linda blurted out a suggestion that since has saved an estimated 80,000 lives.

``She said, `Dad, why don't you fix me some sort of bracelet?' '' said Chrissie Collins, now 91 and as spry as ever.

Marion Collins designed the bracelet, using the universal medical symbol of the caduceus, two snakes wrapped around a winged staff. He applied the words ``Medic Alert'' alongside the emblem and listed his daughter's medical condition on the back.

On Monday, the American Hospitals Association celebrated its 100th birthday by bestowing upon Chrissie Collins the C. Everett Koop Health Advocacy Award, putting her in the elite company of James and Sarah Brady.

2.3 million bracelets

Today there are 2.3 million people wearing Medic Alert bracelets, including 1.7 million in the United States and 425,000 in California alone. The Turlock-based organization, by virtue of reports from individuals and first-response medical personnel, estimates the bracelets have prevented 80,000 people from incurring the medical mistakes that might have killed them.

Her husband died in 1977, but Chrissie Collins maintained her role as flag-bearer for one of the nation's great success stories.

Collins received her honor Monday from American Red Cross CEO Elizabeth Dole at the Washington Hilton.

Collins also came to Washington to promote the entity she built from a family project - run out of a Rolodex of 3-by-5-inch cards - into a worldwide organization with a $15 million annual budget and 120 full-time employees.

After Medic Alert was featured in a supplement circulated in 40 newspapers nationally in 1960, Collins received more mail than she and her four children could handle within just a few days.

``We were stuck with 10,000 letters and just the family to answer them,'' she said. ``We sent out a distress signal. We called the nurses association and the service clubs. The kids got out their typewriters and we got through it.''

600,000 calls annually

Medic Alert now averages 600,000 nonemergency calls annually. The organization, which maintains around-the-clock staffing, also handles 20,000 emergency calls each year from physicians or first-response personnel from around the world.

Operators can access the information through a computer system and immediately provide a patient's history. Because the organization's phone number is printed on every bracelet, Medic Alert became a major reason the 209 area code remained in the northern San Joaquin Valley in a battle with the Fresno area for the digits.