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A young orthopedic technician from Artemisa became the centerpiece of a story of solidarity that touched thousands on social media after a mother anonymously shared how he helped reduce her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter's dislocated elbow right in the park, without asking for anything in return.
The post, shared in the Facebook group "Compra y venta Artemisa", received over 16,700 reactions and hundreds of comments that quickly identified the young man as Richel Cruz, an orthopedic technician at the Comandante Ciro Redondo García General Teaching Hospital and a volunteer member of the Cuban Red Cross in Artemisa.
The mother recounted that her daughter got hurt when her little brother picked her up by the arm after a fall: "The girl started to cry after falling, and my other child lifted her by the arm. When I saw that she wouldn't stop crying, I decided to walk to the hospital because we couldn't touch her arm."
It was during that journey when Richel, who was sitting in the park, stopped her and offered help: "When I walked by, he called out to me, ‘Excuse me, ma'am, could I take a look at the little girl’s arm?’ Feeling nervous, I approached him, and he touched her arm and told me that what my girl had was just a dislocated elbow. In a matter of seconds, he moved her arm, and soon enough, the little girl was no longer complaining."
The injury that Richel treated is commonly known as "nursemaid's elbow" or "pulled elbow", medically referred to as radial head subluxation, and it is the most common ligamentous injury of the elbow in children under five years old. It occurs when a child is yanked by the arm and is resolved through a reduction maneuver that, in expert hands, takes seconds and has a success rate of over 90%.
The mother left without being able to thank him, and when she tried to contact him on Facebook, she discovered that her messages weren’t reaching him. She then decided to share the story to find him: "That's why I decided to publish it and try to get him to see it and thank him for what he did for my little girl."
A former teacher of the young man, at the Preuniversitario Manuel Ascunce, also recognized him: "An excellent young man with a good heart, he was my student and is a prosthetics technician at the Ciro Redondo Hospital. May God bless him always for his charisma; a beautiful human being always willing to help."
The story adds to a trend of acts of solidarity that go viral in Cuban Facebook groups, where similar stories —such as a Cuban who gave gasoline to a stranger stranded on the road, or another who offers free trips to pregnant women— generate thousands of reactions because they stand in stark contrast to daily hardships and reinforce solidarity as a core identity value.
A commentator summed up the general sentiment: "Not all youth is lost; there are many young people with a good education and compassion for others. This is an example."
It was Richel's own mother, Daimarys Boza, who delivered the most emotional conclusion to the story when she commented on the post: "He is my son, and I can tell you that he is the best."
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