First Aid Corps

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.”