THE heartbroken mother of a woman who died outside a north-east hotel has thanked the good Samaritans who tried to save her life.
Rhona Issac died outside the Commerical Hotel in Insch last month – just weeks after being told her heart condition was improving.
Passers-by raced to help the 27-year-old, but she could not be saved.
Last night her mother, Gina Isaac, thanked them for their efforts – and urged them to consider attending her “bubbly, bonnie, good-hearted” daughter’s funeral.
Mrs Issac said: “She was bubbly, she had a good heart. She grew up in Kemnay and everybody knew Rhona, she talked to everybody. She made friends easy. She was lovely, she was a bonnie lassie.”
Grandmother Maureen Isaac – whom Miss Issac lived with for some time – also paid tribute.
She said: “She was fun-loving. She had a very good heart. It was just a devastating day. Everybody was just devastated. My mum, I thought she was going to collapse when I told her, she’s 85.
“She loved children as well, loved little kids. She always wanted to work looking after kids.”
Miss Issac was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease at the age of 12, but had recently been told her condition was improving before tragedy struck on Wednesday, October 10 just after 6am.
She and fiance Maxwell Mitchell were living at the hotel while waiting for a council house.
Her partner was asleep upstairs when she collapsed, and did not discover what had happened until 7am when police knocked on his door.
Mrs Issac – who lives in Kemnay with partner Raymond Mutch and Rhona’s brothers Ryan and Duncan – had been in Glasgow for work when she got the call breaking the devastating news.
She said: “On the Tuesday night she was saying to Max she had chest pains but she didn’t think it was bad enough to call the doctors at that time. Eventually, she just got up and out of bed and phoned the doctor and went downstairs.
“I talked to her at 4.50am. She seemed chirpy, she seemed fine. I said just let me know if anything happens.
By 6am she had collapsed. If I knew it was that bad I wouldn’t have gone to Glasgow.
“She wouldn’t want to bother anybody when she was in pain either. She’d obviously got up and left Max in his bed because he never knew anything until 7am.
“He is heartbroken.”
Mrs Issac last night said the good Samaritans who tried to help save her daughter’s life would be “more than welcome” to attend the funeral on Wednesday.
She added: “A guy was going to his work and he saw Rhona just lying there in the front doorway so he went over and did CPR and then two other people tried to help as well.
“I’d just like to thank them for trying to help. I mean he could easily have just walked past her.”
Miss Issac went to St Andrew’s School in Inverurie and enjoyed helping out her fellow pupils. She was also a fan of swimming and socialising.
Her mother said she had struggled with her heart problem for years, but was always determined to just “get on” with life.
“They didn’t detect the heart congenital heart disease until she was about 12 when she went for a hernia and they
found a heart murmur,” she said. “She went to Aberdeen and got tests and they said she had a hole in her heart and said we had to go to Yorkhill Hospital.
“We were there for a month and she got a big operation. And then in the last year she started having problems again. She’s been in and out of hospital so many times in the last six months.
“She would be ill, but she just got on with it. There were some days where she was really poorly. But we were in Aberdeen Hospital to see a specialist, me and her, and they said that everything seemed to have levelled itself out and she seemed fine.”
Miss Issac’s funeral will be held at Aberdeen Crematorium’s west chapel at 1.35pm on Wednesday. Donations, in lieu of flowers, can be made to Yorkhill Hospital, where she was treated as a youngster.