First Aid Corps

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

Stephen Gauthier the Saviour

Gauthier was working out across the gym when he heard someone scream, and then saw a stranger lying on the floor. 

Hukka, 57, had gone into cardiac arrest and was unconscious.

Gauthier, a certified trainer who is also certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, realized Hukka did not have a heart beat and grabbed the external defibrillator while another gym employee gave Hukka chest compressions.

“As far as nerves — I was shaken at the time but was calm because instinct and adrenaline took over, but immediately following — I was pretty shook up,” said Gauthier.

“All I could think about for the next 48 to 72 hours was just hoping he was going to make it and talk to him again,” said Gauthier.

“It’s amazing looking into his eyes. Those were the eyes rolling to the back of his head,” said Gauthier.

After eight days, Hukka was released from the hospital.

“What can you say to the guy who saved your life — Thanks,” said former firefighter Bob Hukka to 25-year-old Stephen Gauthier.

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

Vincent T. DiFilippo Saved

The Silver Spring Twp. supervisor slumped over the papers spread on his desk. 

DiFilippo, 51, had just suffered an apparent heart attack during Wednesday night’s supervisors meeting.

When DiFilippo collapsed, fellow Supervisor Mary Lou Pierce-McLain grabbed him from one side and secretary Sue Ellen Adams reached for the other. He didn’t respond.

Chairwoman Jan LeBlanc shouted DiFilippo’s name, and a standing-room-only audience froze as he lay unconscious on the floor.

Not Jerry McAteer.

McAteer, an Annville EMT, was at the meeting on behalf of his employer, Delta Development.

The Army veteran, whose military specialty was dismantling explosives, didn’t hesitate when DiFilippo collapsed. Pushing others aside, he rushed to the fallen man.

Throwing himself to his knees, McAteer began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Before an ambulance crew arrived, about 10 minutes into the attack, McAteer and township police staff, Chief Jim Sadler, Detective Dale Sabadash, Sgt. Leroy Hippensteel and Patrolman Steve Grunden repeatedly applied an automatic external defibrillator before reviving DiFilippo.

For nine seemingly interminable minutes, McAteer, Sabadish, police Chief Jim Sadler and others worked on DiFilippo who, according to LeBlanc, has had heart health problems.

As the AED was applied at least three times, LeBlanc and other township officials gathered in an anguished cluster. Developers, engineers, attorneys and township residents stood silent as the digital voice of the AED commanded rescuers to “Stand back.” “Check pulse.”

The hospital could not be reached for a comment on DeFilippo’s condition this morning.

Updates on 19/03/2009

“I was out for nine minutes. That’s beyond brain death. That I didn’t have brain damage is because of what Jerry did. He and the defibrillator saved my life,” DiFilippo said.

“I still have some discomfort in my chest, which I expect I’ll have for some time,” DiFilippo said.

“I’ve been given, for unknown reasons, a second chance to live, and I’m not going to waste that opportunity. I’m enjoying looking out my window at the birds, walking the dogs, washing the car, filling the bird feeder and spending time with my wife,” he said.

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

David Page the Saviour

It was an early morning tennis lesson and then a bucket of balls to practice his serve.

Minutes into his practice the tennis player – just a month into learning the sport – collapsed on the court at the Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club.

He wasn’t breathing. His heart stopped beating.

David Page is in the tennis business – not in the business of saving lives. At least that was the case up until Wednesday when he looked up from the lesson he was teaching and saw one of his students – and friend – down.

Page, 47, ran inside the club and grabbed the Automated External Defibrillator. With firefighters on their way, Page began CPR.

The AED’s mechanical voice told him what to do and he did what he was told as he tried to shock his friend back to life.

He has a wife. He has a family. He had things to live for.

“You want to give the heart a little jumpstart,” Page said.

It was here where 12 years of CPR training came rushing in. And the sessions on how to use the AED – which had been installed at the club more than five years ago. Page knew how to use it. He just never expected he would have to.

“When you really have to do it it’s a whole different program,” Page said. “It was miraculous,” Page said. “I kept telling him ‘don’t do this to me. You better come through.’”

Three minutes after the 911 call firefighters from the Orange County Fire Authority arrived. The man had no pulse. His heart was quivering with no rhythm or beat. Page tried to get up to get out of their way. But the firefighters wouldn’t have any of it.

“They told me ‘get back down there and finish your chest compressions,’” Page said. So he did, helping OCFA Firefighter Paramedic Jim Bush continue CPR as Bush used an AED one more time on the fallen man.

Two minutes after firefighters arrived, he had a pulse and he was breathing on his own. Within five minutes he was opening his eyes.

Not many people come back from this,” said OCFA Capt. Jack Perisho who responded to Wednesday’s call of a man in full arrest. “I truly believe that because of the actions of David Page this guy is alive now.”

“Thank God,” Page said. “I love that man so much. I am just glad I was there to help.”

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

Dolphan McFadden Saved

On January 4th, McFadden was playing basketball with his friends on this same court when his heart stopped.

“My heart just started fluttering and I just fell out.”

McFadden, who is a physically fit 52-year-old father of six, fell flat on the court.

Jessica Thompson is a nurse at the Orange Park Medical Center. She just happened to be taking an exercise class at the YMCA that day. Her boyfriend, who had been playing ball with McFadden, brought her to his aid.

Thompson used the YMCA’s automated external defibrillator, or AED, on McFadden. It’s the third time an AED at a First Coast YMCA has been used.

Thompson said, “After the AED shocked him, I started CPR and Bill started after me.”

She’s talking about Bill McCarthy, who works at the front desk at the YMCA. He’s served two tours in Vietnam, and those life-saving skills he learned in the military came back to him.

McCarthy said, “Then I got some shallow breaths from you. It was just enough to stop CPR, put an oxygen mask on you, and they put you on a gurney.”

McFadden was then rushed to the hospital, unconscious, and had to have surgery. Doctors put a defibrillator device into his chest to prevent his heart from stopping again.

Tuesday, McCarthy shook his head and told McFadden, “Yeah, I worked like crazy on you.”

McFadden smiled and said, “That’s my man! Thank you, Bill! You’re an angel. You’re an angel.”

Bill replied, “Naw. I was just there at the right place at the right time.”

“I used to be someone who had trouble sitting down. I would keep pretty active,” he said. “Now I am getting chauffeured around until they clear me to drive again.”

As for McCarthy and Thompson, McFadden said they’re actions kept him alive to enjoy more time with his wife, Victoria, and his five children.

McFadden calmly told First Coast News, “I had angels here protecting me, looking out for me. So, I feel blessed.”

“To me they are like angels being at the right place at the right time. The timing was impeccable,” he said. “It was sheer coincidence that (Thompson) was there to operate (the AED).”

“I’m just thanking God that I am alive.”

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

Joseph Tamanini (sitted) and Ann Sturns

Joseph Tamanini, 82, had been mowing the lawn of his Bridge Street home when his friend, Ann Sturns, noticed the lawn mower was running idle. 

“I decided to take a look and found Joe lying on the ground beside the mower,” Sturns said. She asked a neighbor to call 911, and three New Cumberland police officers answered the call.

“When I arrived on the scene, I believe I saw Mr. Tamanini draw his last breath,” said Cpl. Joseph Spadaccino of the New Cumberland Police Department.

Spadaccino and Officers Tracy King and James Burns arrived within minutes and revived Tamanini, using an automated external defibrillator, or AED. An AED is a portable device that shocks a patient’s heart in an attempt to reset its natural rhythm.

“Someone up there was looking out for me,” Tamanini said. “It gave me a second chance at life.” He underwent heart surgery and hasn’t had brain damage or other side effects from going into cardiac arrest.

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

Kim Blake the Saviour

A customer came into the store a little after 4 p.m. that day and told workers that another customer, a 52-year-old Renton man, had fallen to the ground of the parking lot. 

Sharina Brock, another McLendon Hardware Store’s manager, rushed out to the parking lot and returned inside, where she announced that the man wasn’t breathing.

Blake, trained in CPR, grabbed the store’s Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and attached it to the fallen man. The laptop-sized machine jolted the man’s heart back to life, and Blake then performed CPR on him until Renton Fire and Emergency Services Department arrived.

“It felt like an hour and a half, but I bet you it was maybe five minutes,” Blake says of how long she performed CPR on the man.

She says it took another 45 minutes to get the man’s heart beating on its own.

Staff from Renton Fire and Emergency Services Department told Blake that the man would not have survived without the shock provided by the AED. Blake attached the AED to the man about two minutes after he collapsed.

Blake burst into tears when the Renton firefighters told her they had found a pulse on the man.

They asked me ‘How does it feel to save a life?’ and I just lost it,” she recalls.

“Even having a baby, this was probably the most tense experience I’ve ever had,” she added.

Blake doesn’t know the name of the man she saved. All she knows is that he was 52 at the time and that he is alive. His mom called McLendon’s from Tennessee to deliver that good news.

He was saved by an AED purchased with $10,000 donated.

“I was actually kind of laughing when we got it,” Blake confesses. “Like what are the odds we’re going to have to use it? And tada!”

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

Doyle Stobaugh (sitted) saved by Elsa Key and Jo-Ed Woodard

Doyle Stobaugh said on that day, he did not feel quite right. 

“I started not to come (to the center) that day. It’s a good thing I did,” he said.

Key, the center’s activity director, said, “He volunteered to say the blessing that day. It was very touching for some reason.”

A few moments later, she was assisting another gentleman when “someone hollered ‘Someone’s down.’ I came running. Doyle was lying by the water fountain in a pool of blood,” she said.

Woodward said Key told her to get the AED. The center has six, and one was nearby. Woodward retrieved it and brought it to Key. Meanwhile, executive director Debra Robinson had called an ambulance.

“His face was literally black. His eyes were open and staring. I didn’t recognize him, and I see him every day,” Woodward said.

Key began to follow the instructions given by the AED, which provides voice prompts. It directed her to push the button to deliver a shock and to administer CPR.

“Neither one of us had ever done it before except we had the training three months ago,” Woodward said. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my 64 years, and I’ve never felt so helpless in my whole life.”

“It was a day none of us will ever forget,” Key remarked.

Stobaugh said to his rescuers, “You don’t know how much I appreciate y’all.”

A week ago Thursday, Doyle Stobaugh was released from the hospital, and on the following day, he went to see his friends at the senior center.

“We have nothing but praise for the people here at the senior center and what they’ve done. They knew what to do and had the right equipment. If it happens to me, I hope I’m here,” Debbie Stobaugh said. “I know things worked out by the grace of God. He was in the right place at the right time.”

“If they had not had that (AED), he would not be here today,” she said.

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

Phil Nusser Saved

Refereeing a basketball game at Ellinwood High School on Jan. 6, Phil Nusser collapsed on the gym floor. His heart stopped beating, and there was no pulse.

Nusser had gone into cardiac arrest.

Billinger, a Washburn University freshman, happened to be home from college for semester break and attended the game.

“I was talking to a friend and heard people yelling and a whistle blowing,” Billinger said.

An off-duty registered EMT for the past six months, she jumped into action.

“There was another EMT, a firefighter, several nurses and my dad, who’s a highway patrolman,” Billinger said of people who rushed to help Nusser. “I called 911 and got the defibrillator, attached it and followed the steps.”

She shocked Nusser’s heart and brought him back quickly. It was the first time she had used the device on a person.

“I didn’t think about it,” Billinger said. “I was just worried about the ref.”

Whisked out of the gym and flown by helicopter to Hutchinson’s Promise Regional Medical Center, doctors removed a blood clot and inserted a stent.

That he survived, with no damage to his heart, is nothing less than a miracle, says Nusser, a St. John resident, who is the Stafford County Roads and Bridge supervisor.

A week later, he has fully recovered and has returned to work, he said. Tuesday night, he was back in the same gymnasium to watch a niece from Lyons play basketball against the Ellinwood girls.

“The stars were lined up in my favor,” he said. “This could have happened at work where I’m by myself a lot, or it could have happened on the living room couch.”

Nusser was thankful he was in Ellinwood, where they have AEDs, when it happened.

“I woke up in the gym,” he said. “I was in the best place to be if something like that was going to happen.”

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

Evan Goodman (left) and Heritage Tennis Club employee Rob Laue (right)

Goodman, 68, suffered a severe heart attack on Dec. 15, seconds after his weekly tennis match at the Heritage Tennis Center in Arlington Heights. There wasn’t any chest clutching. No piercing pain. A week earlier he had passed his yearly physical with flying colors. 

“Maybe I felt a little heaviness in my chest but nothing unusual,” he said. “I was told I walked into the changing room. I don’t remember doing that.”

In the locker room, Goodman’s heart stopped and he slumped to floor.

The club’s assistant, Rob Laue, was at the front desk when he heard someone yell, “Call 911!” He grabbed the defibrillator off the wall and ran into the locker room.

“I was nervous, but I didn’t panic – although I’m getting a little nervous just thinking about it now,” Laue said with a deep breath and a smile. “I mean, you train for this, but you never really think it’s going to happen.”

When Laue reached Goodman, he was lying on his back and not breathing. Laue hooked up the defibrillator’s pads to Goodman’s chest and pressed the shock button. Then he gave Goodman 30 chest compressions before the paramedics arrived and took over.

“Knight in shining armor,” said Goodman, who dropped by the tennis club recently to see Laue. “If he didn’t do what he did, I wouldn’t be here. I wanted to say thanks. People don’t say thanks enough.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Goodman’s wife, Sandy, before embracing Laue, 31, of Round Lake Beach.

A few days after being released from the hospital, the lanky Goodman still appeared athletic, if a little tired.

What he’s not doing is dwelling on the past and what might have been.

“I mean, think about it, if it happened 15 minutes later when I was driving home, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said.

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

Gerry Cook (Left) Thanks His Rescuers

On Aug. 3, Gerry Cook was at Spruce Beach in Elliot Lake enjoying the sunny day with family visiting from down south for the August long weekend. 

Cook, an Elliot Lake resident since 1980, went for a swim, but almost didn’t make it back to the beach.

The 69-year-old Cook says he blacked out while in the water. It was his grandson who first noticed something was wrong because he could not see his grandfather.

Five city lifeguards were recognized at the Jan. 1 mayor’s levee, Craig Roy and Dylan Lees, who performed CPR on Cook, along with Leah deBortoli, Ben Shipman and Christina Ucci. They received certificates from the city for rescuing and resuscitating Cook at Spruce Beach.

Cook also went up front to personally thank the youths for saving his life.

As a result of their actions, the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation recognized the two lifeguards who performed CPR and the EFR firefighters for their efforts and awarded them a plaque for the lifeguards and certificates for the EFR firefighters.

A grateful Cook presented the plaques and certificates to the lifeguards and the firefighters.

“If it wasn’t for the co-ordinated efforts of all you people,” Cook told the group, “I probably would not be here today because it was so close.”