Former Assemblyman Ferguson Recovering From Heart Attack

NEWPORT BEACH — Former Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, recovering from a heart attack he suffered last weekend, said he expects to be walking around Balboa Island again in a few days.

The 74-year-old retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel said he dismissed an onset of chest pains late Saturday as indigestion, but allowed his wife to admit him to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian early Sunday when the condition worsened. Doctors told Ferguson and his wife, Anita, that a heart attack had begun nearly 16 hours earlier, he said.

“I don’t smoke and I hardly drink, although I was going to drink on Cinco de Mayo and ended up here instead,” Ferguson said Tuesday. A hospital spokesman said his condition since Sunday’s angioplasty procedure had been upgraded from fair to stable and he could be released by the weekend.

During his four terms in Sacramento, Ferguson routinely blasted then-Assemblyman Tom Hayden, now a state senator, who had been a Vietnam-era anti-war protester.

After an unsuccessful bid for a state Senate seat last year, Ferguson said he’s been busy leading a Republican activist group in Corona del Mar, helping his wife run a building company and fishing on his boat, where he spent his birthday last month.

Ferguson said when he’s released from the hospital, he plans to walk more and change his diet “somewhat,” although he’s never had heart problems or warning signs, such as shortness of breath, before.

“If this was going to happen, you would think it would’ve happened back in my stressful life when I was in office,” he said. “Not now, when I’m just sailing along.”