First Aid Corps

The parents of a six-year-old Pflugerville boy call his survival “miraculous” after he stopped breathing and his heart stopped last week.

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Brookhollow Kindergarten student Matthew Gates was at an after school program when he went into cardiac arrest.

“He’s a very rambunctious kid. He’s a six-year-old who likes to run and play,” Matthew’s father Mike Gates said.

Matthew’s grin hides a lifelong struggle against a rare heart disease known as Left Ventricular Non Compaction Cardiomyopathy.

Matthew’s family discovered the heart complication the day before his second birthday when he stopped breathing and collapsed. However, at that time he regained consciousness without the help of an AED or CPR.

Doctors told his parents he would not have issues until he was a teenager, but Matthew again collapsed last week at Brookhollow Elementary School in Pflugerville and stopped breathing.

After school teachers quickly administered CPR and used an AED to deliver a shock.

“His life was saved by an AED,” Mike Gates said.

Friday morning Austin-Travis County EMS demonstrated how an AED, or automated external defibrillator, can save lives.

Once the device is turned on it gives verbal instructions including placing pads on the front and back of the patient. The AED will then search for a pulse, and if there is none it gives a shock to the victim’s heart to restore its rhythm.

“It’s for anyone to use. Anyone can pull it off the wall, and use it if needed,” said CPR coordinator for Austin-Travis County EMS John Villanueva.

AEDs are available in public places including malls, airports, and city buildings.

In 2007, the Texas Legislature mandated that every school campus and UIL competition have an AED device readily available. Schools were supposed to comply by September 2008.

In 2006, an AED saved the life of Westlake football standout Matt Nader when his heart stopped during a game.

“Ninety-nine out of 100 people this happens to, they die. I am that one percent,” Nader said in September 2009.

Matthew also beat the odds, and is now recovering at Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas.

This week doctors planted a small defibrillator in his chest that will monitor his heartbeat.

Now Matthew’s family is thankful that he survived thanks to the quick action of after school teachers and the help of an AED.

“The doctors call it miraculous he was himself the next day. A lot of the kids don’t make it,” Mike Gates said.

William Jackson was delivering flowers for his wife’s shop, Edna’s Southpoint Florist, when he passed out at the wheel.

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The incident began about lunchtime on Jan. 5, when the workers at the Mary Washington office discovered that Jackson had crashed into the passenger side of Little’s parked car.

He had apparently suffered a cardiac arrest. He was upright and unconscious in his seat. He still had his foot on the accelerator, and his van was pushing against Little’s Grand Cherokee.

Little, Mock and Hebb rushed to the parking lot to find white smoke coming from the tangle of vehicles, and the horn on the van blaring.

Little said she recalls the strong smell of burning rubber and was afraid that the van might catch fire.

“I don’t know what this car is going to do,” she remembers thinking. “We have to get him out.”

Little grabbed the man’s feet, and the others, including Dawn Shannon, had his head. Together they moved him from behind the wheel onto the ground.

Little is one of the supervisors at the Massaponax office. Mock is a field supervisor, and Hebb is a case manager. All three are registered nurses trained in CPR.

The man had no pulse and was not breathing, so Hebb began chest compressions.

Another employee in the office brought a barrier mask so Mock could begin respirations. And soon Leann Curtis showed up with the office defibrillator.

They raised the man’s shirt and applied the pads, but the defibrillator did not recommend a shock.

When a crew from a Spotsylvania rescue squad arrived, they took over CPR. The crew transported the man to the Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center.

From there, he was taken to Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond. This week he was transferred to a hospice unit.

“You always want to do what you can,” Little said. “There’s always a chance.”

On Oct. 22, Tom Branden went into cardiac arrest while working the final leg of his shift in Hormel Food’s grocery division at Hormel’s flagship plant in Austin, Minn. He was saved thanks to a team of nine co-workers who came to his rescue, reviving him with the use of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).

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I was the first one to spot him,” said Darwin Sellers, a 39-year employee who’s known Branden for years. “He was flat on the floor, motionless. His helmet was about 5 feet away from him. He absolutely didn’t move.”

Sellers ran to a nearby office and called the plant emergency number. He knew he didn’t have time to check for vital signs when he first found his friend.

“It was like an inner instinct,” Sellers said. “If he was hurt in some way, he’d be moving. I thought then that it might have been too late because of his color.”

While Sellers was on the phone, Jordan Williamson was on his way to Branden.

“I tried to get Tom to respond,” Williamson said. “He wasn’t breathing.”

The 20-year-old had no medical training, he said, “so I just stayed with him until someone came, and kept trying to get him to respond.”

Supervisors in Branden’s area reached him within seconds and began chest compressions and resuscitation.

The on-site medical team reached Branden on the heels of the supervisors, bringing an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

The AED, which automatically diagnoses heart rhythms, was attached to Branden. A shock was advised; the team delivered it. Branden’s heart responded.

First taken to Austin Medical Center, Branden was then flown by helicopter to Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

All nine people involved had a specific role to play, Sellers said — and something else did, too. Call it coincidence, luck, a miracle; whatever the word, the rescue team had it.

Sellers, for example, was using a time clock he normally didn’t use. Had he punched in at a different site, he wouldn’t have seen Branden on the floor.

One of Branden’s supervisors had completed the annual CPR training that morning, the other had finished the day before.

“I’d like to thank Hormel Food Corp. for having everything here,” Branden said later at the Heartsaver Hero presentations, “and everyone here who worked on me. If it wasn’t for Hormel Foods, I wouldn’t be here today.”

A 26-year Hormel employee, Branden was saved by one of 14 AED units installed around the Austin Plant. With 150 employees trained in the use of the defibrillators, Branden’s rescue was swift and effective.

All who responded said the most rewarding part of this crisis is seeing Branden alive today.

Back in September at the Chisholm Heights Baptist Church in Mustang, Martha Rhodes was talking to fellow church members when she suddenly fell over.

Sudden, had no pain, no chest pain like, nothing. I didn’t feel any different,” Rhodes

Blood clots could have taken Rhodes life, but she said divine intervention saved her. Her pastor Scott Badgett took a short lunch that day and came back to the church just minutes after Rhodes fell lifeless.

“She was already ashen and her lips were blue. It looked like she was gone. She wasn’t breathing,” Badgett said.

So Badgett started “bystander CPR” by doing chest compressions. It was the first time since his training 30 years ago that he needed to use the skill. He continued the CPR while EMSA paramedic Kimberly Maze prepped the defibrillator.

“It was probably three or four shocks before we got a pulse back on her,” Maze said.

Maze said it’s amazing Rhodes is alive. Maze credited Badgett’s work, but Badgett said he had help.

“I guess it just helps me to know that God can use just about anybody because it had been so long since I had CPR. It wasn’t something I had ever done on someone before,” Badgett said.

Rhodes said she is forever grateful for her pastor, and that day changed her life for the better. Rhodes is now healthy and strong, but she said she will never be the same.

“I do feel different because I treat everyday like a gift, and when I say goodbye to my loves ones, I will make sure I say goodbye because you never know it might be your last time to do that,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes now has a defibrillator, and she said ironically she was trying to get a CPR class together for the church before her near death experience. Church members have since put together a class.

Darlene Dougherty, a sophomore at Academy Park High School, attends the DCTS Emergency and Protective Services program at the DCIU Folcroft campus and the Delaware County Training Center taught by instructor Paul Tresca and assistant Rich Caruth. Like many other DCTS students, Dougherty said the hands-on learning approach of the technical school programming appealed to her and brought more meaning to regular classroom disciplines, especially with her career goals in emergency services and law enforcement.

Only weeks after she was one of 40 students in the class receiving CPR/AED certification, Dougherty was at home in Folcroft, ready to run an errand with her dad, Joe. She looked out the window and saw him on the ground next to his truck.

“I was the only one home who could handle this. I jumped over a table and down 13 steps,” said Dougherty, noting her little brother, grandmother as well as mother returning home all added to a sense of chaos she had to overcome.

Dougherty ran outside, calling 911 on the way, and yelled to a neighbor for help. She instructed the neighbor to hold her father’s head to prevent any further head or spinal injury while she performed “textbook CPR,” according to Tresca’s recounting of the incident.

Paramedics arrived within minutes, taking over CPR and administering an AED (Automated External Defibrillator), bringing Joe Dougherty back to life. The Doughertys learned later kidney stones had created the crisis.

“My teachers really taught me something that I could use. It’s so different when you are in class for two hours and studying what you like,” said Dougherty.

Skills needed for the Emergency and Protective Services course include critical thinking, judgment and decision-making, problem solving and a high degree of motivation and self discipline.

Dougherty gave those attributes a true-to-life face, saying, “I would have given the same care to anyone, but it was my dad. I had to stay calm, do what I was taught and make no mistakes.

“What she did was unbelievable. But I have to thank Paul (Tresca) a lot for doing what he does in the class,” said Joe Dougherty, a retired corrections officer.

Although only 16, Darlene Dougherty has a clear view of what she wants to achieve in the future. She will further study EMT courses at DCTS, join the U. S. Marines for a stint, and then become a police officer.

“Darlene wanted me to stay in law enforcement, but it was time for me to retire,” said her dad, who now has the luxury of watching his daughter fulfill her ambitions.