Fire specialist Steve Hinojosa was working out at a Lifetime Fitness on McCarty Lane, when he heard someone ask if anyone knew CPR.
Specialist Steven Hinojosa, who has 22 years of experience with the Austin Fire Department, said it was just luck that he was within earshot when someone called for help.
I had forgotten my gym shoes, and had to go back to my car to get them,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have been upstairs exercising, and would never have known what happened.”
He rushed into the gym and saw a man on the floor. The man was not breathing, so Hinojosa began resuscitation immediately.
Two staff members were helping, and they were great,” he said. They brought him a portable defibrillator, and Hinojosa shocked him once.
Shortly afterwards, the man regained consciousness. Hinojosa said the 58-year-old man was talking to emergency medical personnel as he was rushed to South Austin Hospital. “I heard he was doing well,” he said.
Jordan Peters was about 10 minutes into a workout at the Orillia YMCA when a middle-aged man stumbled toward him across the weight room, then slumped to his knees and fell face first onto the floor.
A paramedic with eight years of experience, Peters rolled the man onto his back, just as he started to have a seizure.
“He didn’t have a pulse.” Assuming the man was having a heart attack, Peters asked one of the Y staff to bring the defibrillator from the main hallway while he and another staff member began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions.
When a staff member handed him the defibrillator, Peters hooked up the two electrode pads to the man’s chest while an off-duty nurse took over the mouth-to-mouth.
An automated voice said “Stand clear, I’m going to give a shock.”
The jolt caused the man to tremble slightly, but he didn’t come around. Peters took over the chest compressions.
“After about a minute his heart started beating again and he opened his eyes and vomited, just as the paramedics showed up.”
The man was dazed and disoriented but able to answer simple questions.
“What happened?” he asked. “I feel like crap.”
“He was clinically dead.” The 44-year-old man who suffered the heart attack was taken to Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital and then transferred to Newmarket where he underwent heart surgery.
He is recovering in hospital, says Gilda Evely, general manager of the Orillia Y.
This is the first time the defibrillator has been used in the year it has been in the Peter Street facility, said Evely. “We’re very thankful it was here and available in an emergency. These machines save lives.”
Peters says he was simply doing what he is trained to do.
“It was just one of those things — you never know,” he said.
Christian Barton, 30, who was fielding a ground ball at second base at a Patchogue softball field , collapsed as he was about to throw the ball.
The officers, Paul Schreiber and Edward Ryby, and a Patchogue Village public safety officer Jim Mylett responded Saturday night to the 911 call from Shore Front Park in Patchogue.
Schreiber, who was only three blocks away when he received the call, arrived first. Barton’s teammates were already performing CPR.
“As soon as I got there, his teammates were waiting for me,” Schreiber said. “Nobody was panicking, which helped the situation tremendously.”
They rolled Barton on his back and used a defibrillator to monitor his condition. Mylett and Ryby arrived shortly after and took over the CPR.
The Patchogue ambulance arrived and transported Barton to Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center, where he was held in the emergency room for two hours. He was then transferred to Stony Brook University Medical Center and was sedated overnight, according to Barton’s cousin Brian Jenkins, 26, of Amityville.
As soon as yesterday evening, Barton, of Spar Drive was breathing on his own and laughing with his two young sons, according to Jenkins.
“I’m just so happy we were all able to help,” Schreiber said. “That’s why they call them teammates. It was a complete group effort.”
66-year-old Pat Dugan now knows life is too short. Last December, he was playing racquetball with his son Matt at an Omaha YMCA when his heart went into cardiac arrest, and he fell to the floor.
“When he dropped, we kind of nudged him a little because we thought he was joking,” Matt Dugan said. “Then one of the guys we were playing with said ‘I can’t find a pulse’ and I began trying to remember what I should do.”
“I did take CPR in 8th grade and then at college, so I somewhat knew what to do,” said Matt Dugan. But it wasn’t enough, so Matt called for help.
Also coming to Pat Dugan’s aid that day were off-duty Omaha firefighter Brad Witte, the YMCA’s aquatic director, Deb Munger, and head lifeguard Mike Ceeba.
Witte continued CPR while Munger attached an automated external defibrillator (AED) to shock Dugan’s heart back to life. Ceeba came running with an oxygen bag-valve mask to help him breathe.
Munger, who is certified to use the defibrillator, said it was the first time she had done so on a real patient.
“Luckily, my son was there and began CPR immediately,” Dugan said. “He also got the right people and the right equipment to me.”
Dugan was moaning and groaning when paramedics arrived to transport him to Lakeside Medical Center. He spent two days at the hospital before being released and is still trying to regain his full strength.
“If people - all people - would understand how to perform CPR, it would be a lifesaving accomplishment,” he said. “Having somebody there with CPR training and the right equipment made difference for me.”
“Our station is only a minute or two away, but even so, the patient was already shocked and breathing when we got here,” Vonderhaar said. “Those were critical steps and those people who took them are the real heroes.”
In the gym later that morning, Ron Pardi, a gym and music teacher at the school, led the first-graders in a ball-bouncing exercise.
When 6-year-old Olivia Quigley suddenly dropped to the floor, Pardi went to her and found her still breathing. He went to the office to call for help and sent another student to fetch Casaletto from his sixth-grade classroom nearby.
Teacher Robert Casaletto, 38, rushed to the gym fearing something had happened to his daughter, also a first-grader in the class. He went to help Olivia as the other first-graders watched in stunned silence. One began to cry. Then, he sent them into another room.
“That was the hard thing for me,” Casaletto said. “Part of me wanted to go hug my daughter, but I thought, Olivia needs me more.”
Carabine rushed in minutes later. She saw Olivia on the floor, her skin gray. Carabine knew the girl well, having met her at a summer camp last year where she was teaching.
Carabine put her mouth over Olivia’s and gave her two breaths. Casaletto gave her 30 chest compressions. The two alternated the routine for 7 minutes.
Firefighters and emergency workers arrived shortly afterward and shocked the girl with a defibrillator as a school administrator watched and said a Hail Mary aloud.
Olivia’s heartbeat returned.
Joe Quigley arrived at the school just in time to see his daughter’s breathing restored. He pulled out his cellphone and called his wife, a scientist at Biogen Idec Inc. in Cambridge.
“When we got to the ER at Mass. General, they said they believed she had a heart attack,” she said. “It was absolutely inconceivable to me. I still have a hard time accepting this happened.”
“MGH called her their miracle child,” Joe Quigley said sitting in his daughter’s hospital room yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon in her hospital room, Olivia behaved like a typical little girl, coloring pictures and singing songs. She greeted Casaletto and Carabine, as well as her first-grade teacher, Lauren Rozzi, with open arms. They gave her gifts, stuffed animals and notes, from her first-grade classmates. She wiggled two of her loose teeth for them.
“There are no words to express my gratitude,” Cathy Quigley said. “Olivia had angels on earth taking care of her.”
Updates
Today Boston EMT Philip Kennard returned to the same auditorium for a celebration of the rescue of Olivia Quigley, now 7. She was in the front row with her parents, smiling, as officials praised the school’s teachers and rescue personnel for bringing her back to life.
“Right there,” said Kennard, 25, pointing to the spot on the floor where he and his partner Michael Steiner, 49, treated Olivia that day.
“It’s amazing. It’s one of those things that can happen only once in an entire career,” said Kennard, a tall, thin, young man in the brown uniform of an EMT. “She’s made a full recovery, a happy little kid.”
About 200 students from the school, from grades 1 to 7, the girls clad in plaid jumpers and the boys in white polo shirts and dark pants, crowded into the auditorium for the ceremony, which included a presentation of proclamations from the Legislature and from the city.
Principal Mary Ann Manfredonia said Olivia’s family was truly “a profile in courage” and that Olivia had “battled the odds and is well on her way to a complete recovery.”
Joe Quigley, Olivia’s father, said the ceremony was “fabulous.”
“It gave us such an opportunity to stand up and actually thank, in person, everybody that was involved, the teachers, the school, Father Wayne from the church, and, of course, the EMTs that responded so well,” said Quigley.
“Olivia’s doing great. She’s just so happy to be back in school. She’s so happy to be back with her friends. She wants to be a normal little girl. And she is a normal little girl, she’s just been through an awful lot,” said Quigley. It’s still a mystery why Olivia’s heart stopped, Quigley said.
Asked after the ceremony how she was feeling, Olivia said, “Better,” with a big smile.
Quigley said it took seven minutes for emergency responders to get to the school. That was “absolutely fantastic,” he said, but “in our daughter’s case, if CPR hadn’t been performed on her, seven minutes would have been too late.”
The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation (www.sca-aware.org) has launched its You Can Save A Life At School national awareness campaign for schools. Click on the image below to read about the campaign.
A YMCA lifeguard and an off-duty paramedic with Muskoka Emergency Medical Services rushed to his side, calling 911 and starting CPR.
A County of Simcoe Public Access Defibrillator was then successfully utilized to shock the man’s heart which had stopped beating.
The patient regained a heartbeat and was conscious and breathing on his own when paramedics arrived two minutes later.
He was transported to Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital and later transferred to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket for emergency cardiac surgery.
The placement of the AED at the YMCA in Orillia was directed by the County of Simcoe Paramedic Services and made possible by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario’s Heart&Stroke Restart a Heart, Restart a Life Campaign and Chase McEachern Tribute Fund and a generous donation from Scotiabank.
His truck took off down the parking lot out of control, passing other trucks, flew over a ditch, through a fence and kept moving toward the airfield and a number of parked planes.
Toupin jumped onto to the transport as it drove past him and managed to open the cab door and hit the emergency brake.
“When I saw the truck coming, I knew it wasn’t going to stop for anything,” he said. “I ran along side it and used the grab bar to hold on.”
Once the semi was stopped, he and some other nearby truckers elevated Sweeney’s feet and began CPR.
The ambulance arrived on scene to attend to Sweeney.
All of Toupin’s maneuvering may have been in vain if it weren’t for defibrillator the EMT used to resuscitate Sweeney.
Sweeney doesn’t really remember anything of what happened that day. He said he’s just grateful to Toupin.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I was on my way to Baie Sainte-Anne. If it had been ten minutes later I would have been on the highway — and then where would I be?”
“Rick’s doing fine and that’s good enough for me,” said Toupin. “If you asked someone who knows me they would tell you I can be crazy. I’ve done some stupid things… but I would like to think someone would have done the same thing for me.”
“I don’t know how much those machines cost, but they are worth their weight in gold,” said Sweeney. “There should be one on every corner.”
Veilleux was the first responder to arrive there shortly after the 8:30 a.m. He found 76-year-old Armand Caron sitting in a chair, slouched over, and without a pulse. Caron’s wife, Beverly, said her husband had earlier broken his hip and had recently arrived back home from rehabilitation.
A minute or so later, firefighters arrived. Veilleux began performing cardiopulmonary re-suscitation on Caron. The responders then used a defibrillator to send jolts of electricity into Caron in the hopes of reviving his heart.
It worked.
“I’ve (used a defibrillator) before but it was the first time for me anyone’s ever come back,” Veilleux said. “It was an amazing feeling.”
A Delta Ambulance crew arrived and took Caron to the cardiac care unit at MaineGeneral’s Thayer Campus, closing out the incident at 9:17 a.m.
“The four of them worked in concert as a team,” Fire Chief David P. LaFountain said. “It’s not an above-and-beyond kind of award; it’s just the councilors are recognizing a good story out there that these guys, police and fire, are doing a good job working together and providing an excellent service for the town.”
Hermione Welch receives her award from Ron Coatsworth with leisure centre manager Nick Neale, right
The team swung into action when the 67-year-old man from Beaminster collapsed with heart failure while using an exercise bicycle in January.
After supervisor Luke Hayter, 19, and fitness instructor Mike Pebworth gave initial help, Ms Welch, with the aid of a nurse who happened to be exercising in the gym, began the desperate attempt to resuscitate him.
“The first shock from the defibrillator didn’t do anything and I thought ‘oh no’ but on the second I was thinking ‘please please’ and when it shocked it read start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) which it wouldn’t have done if the heart hadn’t started.”
Eventually the man began breathing again and was flown for treatment at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester.
The man’s wife said: “I will be eternally grateful to the staff for what they did. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those involved in his resuscitation, and the subsequent care and kindness shown to me.”
She added: “My husband is now home and appears to be doing well. The outcome could have been so different.”
