The State - News from July 31, 1985

An 80-year-old Latvian man, who collapsed with heart trouble in a San Francisco courthouse elevator on his way to be sworn in as an American citizen, took off his oxygen mask and refused an ambulance ride until a federal judge quickly administered the oath. “Now my heart will start beating again because it’s an American heart,” Osia Ornstin told U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. Ornstin, who wears a pacemaker, was taken to a hospital and later sent home in “good condition.” Ornstin, who said he has been in America since 1979, said he suffered three years’ imprisonment in Moscow during the Joseph Stalin regime. He said he was freed in 1953 when Stalin died.