Last month Lindstrom was ringing up a customer in the pro shop when someone called to report that a golfer was suffering a heart attack on the course.
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Lindstrom said he immediately remembered there was an automated external defibrillator at the bar, so he grabbed that and headed to the fallen golfer while another worker called paramedics.
“He wasn’t conscious when I got there,” Lindstrom recalled. “He wasn’t responding to anything. He was breathing faint breaths and making a moaning sound.”
The unidentified man was a regular who often played at Maple Meadows, Lindstrom said. When he arrived at the fourth hole, the stricken man’s brother was performing CPR. Lindstrom pulled out to the defibrillator and followed the instructions.
“The first thing it says to you when you open it up is ‘stay calm,’” Lindstrom said. “I didn’t feel like I was freaking out or anything, but other people may have something different to say.”
He attached the machine to the man and a shock was applied.
Lindstrom said the machine appeared to be readying for a second shock when it stopped itself. The man’s heart rate appeared to stabilize after the first shock, and soon Wood Dale Fire Protection District paramedics arrived to take the man to Alexian Brothers Hospital in Elk Grove Village.
“The guy’s brother called the next day to say thank you and he said his brother was in stable condition,” Lindstrom said, “But neither of them have been back since, so we don’t know how he’s doing.”.
