Window Cleaner Needing Help In Peru

Bryce Astill in Peru, he left his window cleaning company for 2 months to be run by his brother while he was away.

Community stepping in to help Utah man in critical condition in Peru: On Feb. 17, Dylan Astill got a text message from his brother, 35-year-old Bryce Astill, who was on a two-month solo adventure in Huaraz, Peru. The message said that he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be participating in an upcoming trek he had planned, said their sister Aubrey Waldron.

Dylan Astill, who was at home in Park City, managing his brother’s high-rise window-cleaning business while he was away, thought nothing of the text message, but wished his brother well, Waldron said. Six days later, Dylan Astill got another message from Bryce Astill saying he was at the local clinic to be checked, followed the next day by “I have acute pulmonary edema and pneumonia. I am being moved to the ICU. Call Dad.” After that, silence.

Dylan Astill and his family were now in Utah, faced with the unknown. Bryce Astill was in a foreign country unable to communicate with his family, and nobody knew where he was and how to get to him, Waldron said. After a series of calls, and overcoming a large language barrier, Bryce Astill’s father, Dennis Astill, and sister Alicia Astill, who is a traveling nurse, were able to find out that he was at Clinica San Pablo, Huaraz, Peru.

What they found when they got there was not what they expected. Just two hours before the two family members arrived, Bryce Astill began showing signs of renal failure. He was not responding to antibiotics and was sedated and intubated, lying in the hospital bed in critical condition unable to speak to his father and sister.

Bryce with some running friends.

Family members wondered how such an active, healthy person could have a sudden, life-threatening condition like this. Bryce Astill is an athlete who teaches CrossFit and has run and trained at high altitudes — even up to 100-mile distances at a time. He was well-equipped to handle the high altitudes (up to 10,000 feet) of Peru, as he had often trained in the high Uintas. Nobody had answers, only speculations.

What family and doctors knew was that Bryce Astill needed to be moved quickly to a hospital in Lima, Peru, if he was to survive, but that presented other problems. Transporting Bryce Astill could be dangerous, even deadly. Also, in Peru, you pay for treatment before you receive it, so Bryce’s family needed to raise funds quickly if they were to save his life, Waldron said. Close friend and family spokeswoman Jenny Powers set up a GoFundMe account to raise funds, and that is where it became known how loved Bryce Astill is.

Just two hours before the two family members arrived, Bryce Astill began showing signs of renal failure. He was not responding to antibiotics and was sedated and intubated, lying in the hospital bed in critical condition.

“Bryce is a fixture in the running, ultrarunning and CrossFit communities,” Powers said. “He has run many 100-mile races, placing consistently in the top 10, but he is an even better pacer. He has helped many people cross that finish line and many other finish lines.” Waldron described her brother as “the most genuine, kind, giving and passionate person you'll ever come across,” adding that as a nine-year sober recovering heroin addict, Bryce Astill has helped recovering addicts and mentored troubled youth and battered women through a meditation technique called mind-body bridging.

“Through this challenge, we have seen that Bryce’s family goes way beyond his immediate family,” Waldron said. “It has been so eye-opening to see how many lives he’s reached. So many people see him how we do, and love him how we do.”

Bryce Astill before he became ill in Peru.

Since the GoFundMe account was set up, over $41,000 has been raised, mostly in small donation amounts. The family wants to tell all those who have helped how grateful they are. “We know he is not out of the woods yet, and there are so many more hard days ahead, but it has been so great to have the support of all of Bryce’s friends,” Waldron said.

Astill is in a private hospital in Lima, still sedated and in critical condition, and will stay there, as it is too dangerous to transport him to the U.S., Powers said. The family is still in need of help to cover the thousands of dollars in upfront medical costs, she said. A donation account has been set up at America First Credit Union under “Bryce Astill Charitable Account.” The gofundme.com page is under “Bryce Astill emergency medical fund.”

R.I.P. Bob Hoskins The Window Cleaner Who Became A Household Name

Arguably Hoskins was the perfect big-screen Cockney: immensely companionable, and someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. Bob Hoskins, known for roles in films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Long Good Friday, has died from pneumonia at the age of 71.

Bob Hoskins: the window-cleaner who became a household name - Bob Hoskins, known for roles in films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Long Good Friday, has died from pneumonia at the age of 71. As a star – he was certainly that, and at 5ft 6in maybe the shortest one Britain’s ever produced – Bob Hoskins boasted the inseparable Cockney traits of being immensely companionable and someone you wouldn’t want to mess with, often at the same time. His first major film role, it’s true, gave us rather more of the latter: as Harold Shand, the indomitable antihero of John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday (1980), he was a fireball of raging ambition, stopping at nothing to consolidate his empire.

It was only later that a cuddlier and sadder Hoskins emerged from that blistering initial impression. If Harold felt like a character practically defined by small-man syndrome, Hoskins charged into the rest of his film career as if determined to seem less angry with every subsequent part. The key transitional film was Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986) – another classic take on seedy London criminality, but one with an undisguised romanticism at its core. Hoskins’s George seems so obviously tired of the scene that he’s a much more redeemable creation: a gangster with soul.

This performance, which won Hoskins Best Actor in Cannes and an Oscar nomination, was just the boost he needed to make a go of things in Hollywood, and a busy decade followed as the pay-cheques piled up. Robert Zemeckis and co made the noble decision to cast Hoskins, instead of the mooted and much more obvious Harrison Ford or Bill Murray, as the private dick hero of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). It can’t have seemed too enviable a job, on paper – months on sound stages acting opposite a non-existent lapine co-star? But, through sheer energy and force of personality, Hoskins knocked the role of Eddie Valiant for six. It must have been gratifying beyond belief when the film was a smash hit, and this one-time window cleaner found himself installed at last as a household name.

Thinking Of Window Washer Jimmy At Christmas

Thinking of Jimmy the window washer at Christmas.

When I was ten years old I used to put the New York Times Sunday newspaper together at a small store on Union Street where I grew up. My mother would get up at 4 a.m. and drive me there. It seemed like an endless amount of sections that I had to piece together. I would put up a small table that was about six feet long and line up everything and then started hammering away. It was a lot of work for $10 and it took me about three hours to get it all done. When I was done, I’d have breakfast with the owner of the store and then walk to meet my parents at church.

One day I noticed some guy washing windows outside at a diner that opened at 6 a.m. He had a bucket of water, a sponge and a squeegee. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I kept seeing him every Sunday washing the same windows. I wondered why anyone would need their store-front windows washed so much. It wasn’t like we lived in a dust bowl. Then, one weekday afternoon after school, I was going to the diner to get their three bean soup. It was the best soup I ever had. I asked Charlie, the owner, what the guy was doing washing his windows all of the time. He replied, “That’s Jimmy. He lives on the street and I give him meals for washing the windows.” It was the first time I heard of a trade out and the first time I ever heard of someone giving a damn about someone on the streets. Trying to understand it all when you’re a ten-year-old from a good home and has a bed to sleep in is difficult.

People talk about Christmas as a time for being thoughtful and giving but that’s just once a year. I have friends that refuse to celebrate it because they think the whole concept of caring about people once every twelve months is bogus. As I get older, and in looking back, I can understand their argument. After midnight on Christmas all of the poor people that we act like we care about suddenly turn back into pumpkins. It just doesn’t seem right.

One Sunday in the winter, I saw Jimmy mixing rubbing alcohol with the water in the bucket. I thought he was going freeze as he sat outside the diner on a ladder trying to reach the tippy-top of the big window that was on the right side of the restaurant. He knew me from my family and I stopped to ask him why he put rubbing alcohol in with the water. He explained that it was to make sure the water wouldn’t freeze. It was a trick he learned from another window washer who actually made a living at doing it.

I was done early that day and had time to kill before church, so I went into the diner to get a breakfast sandwich. They used to make theirs with scrambled eggs, provolone cheese and roasted peppers. It was 75 cents and delicious. I sat at the counter and told Charlie to make another one for Jimmy for when he was done. He told me that he already got free food for doing the windows. I asked him to pay Jimmy some cash so he could have a meal for later as well. After all, I had a ten spot in my pocket. When you’re a little kid it’s a great feeling and I always thought money was a dumb concept anyway. I left before Jimmy finished and said goodbye to him on my way out.

The next Sunday, I didn’t see the window washer when I was done. I didn’t think much of it and went on my way. The Sunday after that I didn’t see him again and this time walked into the diner to ask Charlie what happened to him. Charlie said that Jimmy just didn’t show up anymore. I thought he moved onto another town. I always thought to myself, “If you’re going to be homeless why not be homeless somewhere where it’s warm?” Why do homeless people stay in cold cities in the winter? I never understood it and I still don’t.

Later on I found out, through the usual newspaper stand gossip, that Jimmy died of pneumonia at the local hospital. He never made it out of the city and the whole thing made me feel pretty damn bad. I was upset that I didn’t try and do more, I was mad that he had to sit in the freezing weather and wash windows in order to eat, but most of all, I was just sad at the fact that I would no longer be able to say hello to him on my way to church. Life is funny like that. We get so used to our routines that, when they suddenly have a wrench thrown into the works, we feel lost.

To this day I think about him around the holidays. I really don’t know why. Maybe Christmas, more than anything, isn’t so much a time for gifts, but a time to reminisce about what’s important in our own lives. It’s an occasion to be humble, gracious and most of all, thankful for the friends and family we have and the memories and experiences that have made us who we are.

I think Jimmy stated it best and made a good analogy for life when he said, “You have to keep stirring the bucket or it’ll start to freeze up and then it’s useless.”