Cynthia Toohey Profile - Alaska Regional Hospital

BLONDE AMBITION
From New York to the Last Frontier
When Cynthia Toohey moved to Anchorage almost 60 years
ago, she arrived with $210 in her pocket and what seemed
like a reasonable plan: to meet educated men. “I was a
pretty little girl with a 22-inch waist,” she says looking back.
“It was either Australia or Alaska, and I realized Australia
would be too expensive.”
Within weeks of arriving, Cynthia in fact met the love of
her life, her late husband Bernard Toohey, and the couple
married, working as caretakers of Crow Creek Mine in
Girdwood, which they went onto to purchase in 1969 and
she owns today, running the family business as a popular
visitor attraction. Known for her infectious personality, the
gutsy girl from New York City set out on a path of adventure
that would include working as a stewardess for the former
Reeve Aleutian Airways and a six-month stint as a tech
medic on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
Cynthia Toohey, M.D.
Retired
We all just jumped in
and did it all—and
90 percent of the time
we did it right. Everyone
was doing the best that
they could.
Practical and a young mother, she says she sat up out of bed
one morning and decided that without an education she’d
be out of luck if anything ever happened. In 1974, after first
going back and earning her high school diploma, she received
her R.N. degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage’s
second graduating class of nurses and went to work at
Anchorage Community Hospital where she started in the
newborn nursery. With a new baby of her own, and then a
committed smoker, she asked her supervisor to reassign her
so she could take cigarette breaks and ended up being hired
by Dr. Gilbert Dickie, Alaska’s first emergency department
doctor, during a time when emergency medicine was not
yet its own area of specialization. “The back door was a
delivery entrance that opened right into the emergency
room. Kids would drop off their friends who were too drunk
or had overdosed, ring the doorbell, then run. We’d open
the door, drag them in and see what we could do to keep
them alive. It was absolute chaos.”
At 79, Cynthia is enjoying retirement with her three children
and seven grandchildren. She is also a substitute school
nurse and continues to invest in Alaska Regional’s success
volunteering at health fairs and serving on the hospital’s
Board of Trustees since 2001.