First Aid Corps

The players panicked as they surrounded an unconscious Jonathan Moore on the football field outside Pearland’s Glenda Dawson High School on March 3.

Jonathan Moore the Survivor

A minute before, the 16-year-old had been running with his teammates prepping for football practice. But Jonathan, a husky fullback and defensive tackle, suddenly collapsed.

His heart had stopped beating. He had no pulse.

Team trainers Matt Thomas and Chris Shaddock hurried to Jonathan’s side and began CPR.

Thomas grabbed the school’s automatic external defibrillator and used it on Moore to restart his heart.

It started beating again and paramedics rushed the teen to Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston.

“I was sure he was dead,” Shaddock said.

Jonathan barely remembers anything from the day he collapsed. Someone told him he was doing a good job, but a few days later he found himself lying in a hospital bed, scared and confused.

Jonathan said, “Collapsed, passed out, actually died and Shadack and other trainers brought me back.”

“l’m very grateful for Pearland ISD, the trainers and all the doctors here,” said Jonathan’s mother Vanessa Williams.

Thomas and Shaddock said they weren’t really heroes. They were just doing what they were trained to.

“It was a team effort,” Shaddock said.

Cardiologists at Children’s Memorial Hermann implanted an internal defibrillator to regulate Jonathan’s heartbeat.

Steve Aceto, 54, an attorney of Montreat, N.C., was running alongside Robert Barker, his childhood friend and neighbor who is a general practitioner and running enthusiast. Aceto’s son Bill was ahead of his father.

Steve Aceto the Survivor

Aceto and Barker had made it across the bridge and were on Meeting Street at about the five-mile marker when Aceto fell motionless in the street.

Barker quickly noticed his absence and turned back to render aid to his friend, who had suffered a heart attack five years ago.

Running behind them were a number of other doctors and nurses, many of them connected with the Medical University of South Carolina.

When they began attending to Aceto, they could not detect a pulse. They began administering CPR and called for an automated external defibrillator, which administered a shock that got Aceto’s heart beating again.

An ambulance had been summoned, and they were able to get him to MUSC for treatment within minutes of the incident.

Simon Watson, an emergency room physician from MUSC, was one of those runners closest to Aceto and called the hospital so the cardiac care team, headed by Eric Powers, could be assembled quickly.

Aceto said it was a wonderful run.

“I got over the bridge and back down. I got a good bit of the way down Meeting Street and was just about to the turn at the 5-mile marker. It was like flipping off a switch. I didn’t have any sensation of falling. Just a sharp pain and oblivion.

“My next memory was looking up and seeing a bunch of people I did not know who seemed very glad to see me. I found out later they had been doing CPR on me for about 10 minutes, including my dear friend who apparently pushed a beautiful emergency room nurse out of the way to do it. He and I are going to have words about that.”

Barker said that when he saw Aceto in the road he ran back, turned Aceto onto his back, grabbed his head and began yelling to him, trying to get a response.

“We had been talking, and then I looked to my left and he wasn’t there,” said Barker.

He placed his hand on his friend’s forehead and began praying.

“All of a sudden, his right hand moved. And then somebody said he’s breathing. He said, ‘I need to get up.’ It was like he came back from the dead.”

Aceto said technically he was dead, and he plans to frame his race number, stained with blood from where he hit the pavement, alongside the printout from the automated external defibrillator to prove he ran the race.

Aceto said there wasn’t time to be frightened, that he had trust in God as well as the professionals who were treating him.

“I happened to be among the right people,” he said, “at the right place and at the right time.”

Student trainer Daniel Vermunt, men’s rugby coach Les Gilson and Mayla Parrent, associate director of Campus Security took action on November 13 when an 18-year-old varsity rower from Niagara Falls collapsed at the rowing center at the University.

Vermunt and Gilson were waiting for a bus when they heard someone shout, “Someone is down!”

Vermunt, who holds the Lifesaving Society’s Standard First Aid and Automatic Electronic Defibrillator certifications, found that the rower was not breathing.

Vermunt called to a bystander to get the defibrillator. Gilson arrived and with Vermunt, began two-person CPR and used the defibrillator.

Parrent, also a Society Standard First Aid certificate holder helped with compressions.

The three performed CPR for 10 to 15 minutes before the young man began breathing and EMS arrived.

Vermunt and Gilson only happened to be nearby because a bus was late in picking up the rugby team and taking them to an Ontario University Athletics bronze medal game, said Gilson.

“It was a whole bunch of little things that happened to fall into place,” he said.

Kyle DuBois’ heart stopped after receiving the shock in his electrical trades class at Dover High School on March 11 and paramedics were on the scene within a minute after receiving the call and were able to use an automated external defibrillator to get DuBois’ heart going.

Rob Dubois, Kyle’s father, said that he has no doubt that South End Fire Station’s rescuers’ quick response time and actions played a vital role in helping Kyle quickly recover from nearly critical injuries.

“When we left Dover, we were expecting a much different outcome,” he said, noting Kyle’s critical condition when he was transferred by helicopter from Wentworth-Douglass Hospital to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Rob DuBois said he expects his son to return to school on April 5. He also expects Kyle to make a full recovery but noted that doctors still want him to take it easy for a little while because they still have some concerns about blood flow.

“I wish I could shake the hands of every person who supported and prayed for Kyle and my family… but I think it would be impossible,” he said. “I just can’t find the words to thank people… there’s been a lot of kind hearts.”

Just before noon on June 6, Robert Glorioso, an off-duty Cleveland firefighter, was returning from a baseball game with his son in Aurora when he saw a woman lying on the side of the road.

He immediately pulled to the side of the road and leaped out to aid the stricken woman.

Seeing that she was completely unresponsive, he checked her pulse and breathing and immediately surmised that she had suffered a heart attack.

Glorioso called 911 and began CPR, realizing all the while that help would have to arrive quickly if the woman’s life was to be saved.

Aurora Police Department sergeant Stephen Sabulsky, who was on duty, responded in his cruiser.

He said he grabbed the medical kit out of his cruiser, including his defibrillator, and began to help Glorioso.

Sabulsky was able to detect a faint heart beat and used the defibrillator to help revive her heart.

‘It gave her a pretty good jolt,” Sabulsky recalled last week.

An ambulance arrived and the woman, Lisa Perez, 40, was taken to a local hospital, where she recovered.

The device was easy to use, Sabulsky said. He said when he responded, training and instinct took over and there was no time to think.

”The machine is simple,” he said.

His chief, Seth Riewaldt, said Sabulsky always tells the officers on his shift to make sure they have a defibrillator with them. He said he likes having the defibrillators because police are often on the scene of a medical emergency before paramedics.

”We try to tell to the guys you might have a chance to save someone’s life,” Riewaldt said.