First Aid Corps

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Hockey Player Saved

Trevor Forest suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a break between hockey scrimmages at the NAIT hockey arena two weeks ago. His quick-thinking teammates resuscitated him with CPR and a public automated external defibrillator, a portable device that sends electric energy to the heart to return the heartbeat to normal.

“These guys are more than my teammates, they’re my buddies,” Forest said at a press conference. “And that night, they became my heroes. Without their quick-thinking response, I would not be here today.”

He credited his longtime friend and teammate Kevin Pollitt for having the training to apply the public defibrillator to save his life.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.Officers Stan Bruno and Manuel Ruiz were on routine patrol when they got a dispatch at 9:43 a.m. to help paramedics dealing with an unconscious 54-year-old man. When they arrived at the station, they saw that paramedics had yet to arrive, so they got the defibrillator from their squad car and brought it to the platform.

The officers placed the device on the man. When it told them he needed to be shocked, they charged the device and administered two charges.

“The second shock converted the man’s heart to normal sinus rhythm,” Deputy Fire Chief Mark Pugnaitis said.

When the paramedics arrived, they stabilized the man and took him to West Suburban Hospital, where is reportedly doing well and is expected to recover.

“If the patient didn’t get electric stimulation to his heart muscle within five to 10 minutes, he would have died,” he said, noting that when a heart flatlines, there’s a 1 percent chance of survival.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

“I was on my way to an experiment in Milbank, and then I heard a guy yelling,” Cassandra Stroud, BC ’12, said. “I went over and there was a guy lying on the floor.”

Stroud, who learned CPR in a sixth-grade babysitting course and had not practiced it since, taught a bystander to perform chest compressions before beginning to breath into the victim’s mouth.

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” she said of the man who she taught chest compressions to, “but I showed him how because I knew I couldn’t do it hard enough for long enough.”

“In spite of all the chaos—the radio calls, the additional security people responding, the phone calls to the office—she never missed a beat,” Public Safety Supervisor Jim Kelly said.

Kelly called for Public Safety’s defibrillator, which he applied twice without success. Paramedics administered a third defibrillation, as well as medication, finally restoring the victim’s pulse.

“When she heard they were able to restore the pulse, she just broke down,” Kelly said. “The emotion overwhelmed her at that point.”

“If it had been another 10 minutes and we had come upon him then, it would have been a very different story,” Kelly said. “She’s the hero here.”

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Matt Fiato’s hockey team was trailing by a goal. From the bench, he glanced at the clock, then turned to a teammate to complain about something in the game.

Matt Fiato and Family

“The next thing I knew, I was on the floor of the bench looking up,” said Fiato, 40, a father of three children ages 6, 8 and 11.

Fiato, who lives in Binghamton, said he was lucky to be at the BCC rink because it has a defibrillator, and several trained emergency medical technicians happened to be involved in the league. One of them, 19-year-old Dave Edwards, delivered the life-saving shock after rink employee Brett Carter retrieved the device.

Honestly, it’s an indescribable feeling to know I saw this guy die laying in front of me and to bring him back,” said Edwards, an EMT with the Apalachin Fire Department. “It makes you kind of feel like you did make a difference in somebody’s life.”

To his wife, Patti, the AED, along with the good Samaritans at the rink that night, are her husband’s guardian angels.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Referee Mike Fazio had fallen unconscious at halftime of the sixth-grade girls basketball game on Thursday night.

When Fazio fell to the floor, Jeff and Jan Kreis of Shorewood, Jeanine Vogt of Minooka, and Michele Cermak of Minooka rushed out of the bleachers and began administrating CPR.

“He was cold and clammy and barely had a pulse,” she said. “We then lost his pulse and his breathing was faint. We could tell we were losing him.” After losing a pulse and respiration, Jeff Kreis began chest compressions as Vogt gave mouth to mouth.

Minooka Intermediate Principal Harold King, who was not in the gym at the time Fazio fell, brought the AED to the group working on Fazio.

“Someone handed me an AED and I opened it while Jan applied the pads,” Cermak said. “We all cleared and she gave a shock and we watched him slowly come out of it.”

He had no heart beat. No amount of chest compressions or mouth to mouth was going to bring him back,” she said. “He needed a shock to save his life. The AED is a lifesaver.”

“He was dying,” Kreis said. “He needed help. I never thought twice.”

Fazio was transported to a local hospital, where it was reported Friday he was doing fine.