First Aid Corps

Most of us don’t think about breathing. But New Canaan Police Officer Jason Kim will forever remember a single breath from a 14-year-old boy in Waveny Park whose life he helped to save.

Officer Jason Kim the Saviour

“It was a deep breath. It was the loudest breath I’ve ever heard,” Kim said of the first sound the teenager from Florida made as he recovered after passing out last Thursday in Waveny Park during a race.

Kim, a five-year New Canaan police veteran, responded to the park at about 8 p.m. last Thursday for an unknown medical emergency near the Spencer’s Run dog park. A woman flagged him down and said the boy was not breathing and had no pulse. A woman who works at Stamford Hospital, who Kim did not know, had started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Kim used an automatic external defibrillator, carried in every New Canaan police car, to restart the boy’s heart. He followed the machine’s instructions on shocking the boy. “All (of his) muscles contracted at once,” Kim said. The machine then instructed Kim to continue with compressions. Kim stopped after he felt the boy’s heart beating and heard him breathe.

Kim admitted the scene was “surreal” and “scary” at times, but he said he had a job to do and focused on helping the boy until paramedics arrived. Kim said he was relieved that the treatment worked and that the boy responded. He was taken to Norwalk Hospital for treatment and later transferred to Westchester Medical Center. “Thank God for that training, and it worked out that the way it did,” Kim said. “You just do it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

Although Kim is acknowledged as a hero, the officer gives credit to everyone who helped to revive the boy and the medical professionals who cared for him on the way to the hospital. And as the father of a 2-year-old son, Kim says he’s thankful that the boy is still alive.

A 74-year-old Porterville man was revived after efforts to save him by a number of bystanders and two sheriff’s deputies on Saturday in Cayucos.

The efforts culminated with deputies Brent Rechtfertig and Brian Geremia using a defibrillator, according to a San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department news release.

The two were on a routine patrol of the area about 4:45 p.m. and were near Ducky’s restaurant when radio dispatchers reported that a man had collapsed and bystanders were performing CPR.

According to witnesses, a number of people made an effort to save the man before the deputies arrived.

Geremia took over doing CPR while Rechtfertig used the automatic external defibrillator, a portable device that delivers electric shocks to the heart to restart a normal heartbeat.

Cayucos Fire Department and San Luis Ambulance crews arrived shortly after and took the man to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, where he was awake and speaking upon his family’s arrival, according to the news release.

The man’s name wasn’t disclosed.

Ben Hunt of Paso Robles, who was having dinner with his wife, was across the street from the man when he saw him fall to the ground.

“It looked like he was seizing and when I got up to him he was kind-of awake but his eyes were shut and his face was bright red,” said Hunt, who is trained in CPR because he is a psychiatric technician at Atascadero State Hospital.

Hunt said he felt the man’s wrist and couldn’t feel a pulse so he started doing chest compressions.

The man’s wife helped by breathing into his mouth, Hunt said. After a while a woman, who also knew CPR, offered to take over, Hunt said.

“Then we felt a faint pulse,” Hunt added.

He said it was the first time that he had to use his training in an emergency.

“I thought of those situations where people are looking at someone and so in shock that no one does anything,” Hunt said. “And then it just came naturally.”

Hunt, who left without giving his name to deputies, said he called the Sheriff’s Department on Saturday to see if the man was OK.

“I’m just really happy that he is doing okay,” he said.

The last thing Ron Raidy remembers was shooting off a cannon.

Ron Raidy the Survivor

The Bartlett man and his Civil War re-enactment group, Stanford’s Battery, were nearing the end of the Hinsdale July Fourth parade. The Confederate artillery unit draws a lot of interest wherever it goes, especially when they fire the bronze cannon perched on its carriage.

“We had pushed the cannon for more than a mile,” Raidy said, “but I felt fine. I didn’t feel anything coming on.”

Instead of hearing the crowd’s cheer, the 61-year-old collapsed in full cardiac arrest. On Thursday he was recovering from quadruple bypass surgery performed Wednesday at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital.

“It’s like a miracle,” Raidy said.

By all accounts, Raidy is one lucky man. Although he had no history of heart trouble and he was in good shape leading up to the parade — from pushing a cannon for the last three years, he quips — he nearly died in his boots.

“His timing couldn’t have been better,” said Kevin Baker, a firefighter and paramedic with the Hinsdale Fire Department. “The (Adventist Hinsdale) hospital float was right behind him, so there were a lot of medical personnel right there.”

As even better luck would have it, a cardiologist who specializes in heart rhythms was watching the parade with his family, taking in the Confederate group.

“I noticed all the commotion when he went down,” said Dr. Greg Lewis of Hinsdale-based Illinois Heart and Vascular. “When he wasn’t getting up, I went over and found that he was unconscious, not breathing and without a pulse.”

Lewis recognized Raidy was in danger of dying. He immediately began administering CPR, staying with it until Hinsdale Police Officer Tim Lennox arrived with an automatic external defibrillator. The AED shocked Raidy enough to resuscitate him, and Hinsdale paramedics took him to the hospital.

Firefighters said they see too many cardiac arrest cases that don’t have happy endings.

“We see a cardiac incident from time to time,” Baker said, “but what we don’t see is one of them go down in front of us.

“Just knowing he has had a successful outcome,” he added, “makes all of our work and training worthwhile.”

Lewis concurred, adding that while he diagnoses heart rhythms every day, he never expected to be doing it on his day off.

“When a cardiac arrest happens outside of the hospital, your only hope is that someone is there to witness it, and someone has immediate access to a defibrillator,” he said. “In this case, he had both of those. Were it not for those, he would have been dead.”

On Thursday, Raidy said he felt “good” and was “getting better.” He works in cargo customs compliance for Air Canada at O’Hare Airport, which will have to live without him for a while.

His biggest disappointment, however, is missing this weekend’s Civil War Days in Wauconda, where his unit had to carry on without him.

“The doctors haven’t talked about when I can return,” Raidy said. “But I’ll be back.”

When Sahara Labadie, 12, woke her brother, Tucker Labadie, 13, around 1:30 a.m. on June 27, she had some devastating news to deliver.

“She was shaking me and saying, ‘Daddy’s dead,’” Tucker said. “At first, I thought she was messing with me.”

Their mom, Jen Labadie, had gone upstairs to bed 30 minutes earlier. William Labadie — just call him Bill — was already in bed. But something was very wrong.

“I think he was mad about the cat, because he said something about it, and then his head flopped into the pillow face first,” Jen said of her husband. “Then he made the most horrible gurgling noise I’ve ever heard. I picked his head up, and he was gone. The doctor said he was dead before he hit the pillow.”

Bill, 39, had gone into ventricular fibrillation — essentially blood is not removed from the heart and it’s usually fatal.

Jen quickly dialed 911, and stayed on the phone while performing CPR before paramedics arrived. “My panic buttons were completely out of control,” she said.

Sullivan Fire Chief Neil A. Henry was one of the first responders on the scene.

“He essentially had no pulse,” Henry said. “It would come back and then go away again … I wasn’t expecting a good outcome.”

Jen could tell that time and hope were running out. “At one point, Al looked at me with the most pity anyone’s ever looked at me with,” she said.

After working on Bill for more than 30 minutes in the Labadies’ bedroom, paramedics put him in the ambulance for the trip to Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene.

“When I saw the ambulance pull out of the driveway with the lights going but no siren, and they weren’t going fast, I knew it was bad,” Jen said.

Tucker, his son, couldn’t believe what was happening. “It was like looking down on a dream from the top of a glass (ceiling),” he said.

All Jen could think of was that she didn’t want Bill to die outside the hospital, which would have prevented them from donating his organs.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of a world where his beautiful blue eyes weren’t around,” she said, fighting back tears.

Paramedics attempted to revive Bill with electrical shocks three times at the home and twice more en route to the hospital.

It seemed like a lost cause. And then it happened.

After being shocked for the fifth time, Bill suddenly regained consciousness, nearly an hour and 20 minutes after being considered medically dead.

“He came back with a vengeance,” Jen said. “He started ripping things out of him.”

Hospital staff immediately called for the rolling hospital unit, which transported Bill from Keene to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

But questions still lingered over whether Bill suffered irreparable brain damage during the ordeal, Jen said. “We didn’t know if he’d ever be the same again,” she said. “He was hooked up to everything you could think of.”

Ten days later Bill returned home, his brain fully functional and his body on the mend. On Saturday he walked a little, watched some TV, sat on the outdoor deck and the family grilled shish kabobs.

“It’ll be six to eight weeks before he can be active, and he can’t drive for six months because of the defibrillator in his chest,” Jen said of Bill, who works as a bridge builder for Cold River Bridges.

Bill said doctors told him they can’t explain how he recovered after being considered clinically dead for nearly an hour and a half.

“They don’t know, they just say it’s a miracle that I’m here,” said Bill, who celebrated his 39th birthday June 30 while in the hospital. “She (Jen) did good, keeping me alive.”

“They don’t see people come back from this,” Jen said. “People don’t survive this.”

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the survival rate for ventricular fibrillations occurring outside of a hospital is between 2 and 25 percent.

“There’s no way to explain how he’s still here,” Jen said. “He’s the strongest, most determined human being I’ve ever met, which is why I married him.”

Bill’s longtime friend and coworker, James Hollar, spoke of his strong will. “He’s a fighter, and he never gives up,” Hollar said. “There’s not too many people who can come back from where he was … maybe nobody.”

Henry, who’s been a firefighter since 1974, said he’s never seen or heard of anything like it.

“Of all the calls like this I’ve been on, that’s the longest I’ve seen anybody go that came back,” he said. “It was remarkable, and it’s a good feeling.”

Jen Labadie, who suffers from insomnia, is amazed at how many things went right for her at just the right moment.

“If I hadn’t been ready to go to bed yet, I would’ve had no idea (that Bill had suffered an attack),” she said. “Or if I’d taken my (sleeping) medication a few minutes earlier, I would’ve been out.

“I do believe in a divine power,” she said. “But I don’t know why certain people get miracles and some don’t.”

Al Schmidt is still trying to forget May 12. It was a hot and sunny afternoon, typical for the opening day of the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

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Seconds after a heat of the decathlons’ 400 meters, Schmidt, the director of Mississippi State University track and field, felt dizzy. A shortness of breath followed.

Al Schmidt the Survivor

Still struggling to breathe, he scanned Spec Towns Track in Athens Ga., for MSU track coaches Steve Dudley and Houston Franks then walked toward them, holding a copper container with glycerine pills. He reached for Dudley where he collapsed, falling into Dudley’s arms, the beginning of his latest fight for his life.

Time, which track coaches constantly monitor, was in short supply.

By the time Dudley took the top off the pill bottle, Schmidt’s jaw had locked. So he rubbed the medicine on his gum line to get it in his bloodstream. It had no effect.

Scar tissue from a triple bypass surgery was causing an arrhythmia — an irregular heart beat — disrupting his heart’s normal functions, blocking blood from traveling throughout his body.

If not corrected, Schmidt’s heart would stop. His skin started to turn blue.

“I checked his pulse,” Dudley remembered. “It was a light pulse but not a good pulse.”

Shocked, athletes surrounded Schmidt. Dudley yelled for an ambulance and medical assistance. Dr. Donald Lazas, the father of a runner from the University of Arkansas, ran from his seat in the stands and performed CPR. Ron Courson, an athletic trainer at the University of Georgia, retrieved the on-site automated external defibrillator (AED).

Schmidt’s pulse returned after the defibrillator’s first administration, then faded. He flat-lined.

It was administered again. This time, his pulse returned and settled, allowing Schmidt’s heart to re-establish an effective rhythm.

Emergency medical support was still en route, but the entrance gate was closed. MSU freshman James Harris ran toward the gate and pushed it open as the ambulance arrived, saving four to five minutes it would have taken EMS personnel to enter the track through a different gate. With cardiac arrest, four to five minutes is long enough to suffer brain damage.

Schmidt, already the survivor of a heart attack in 1998, was now stable and communicating with EMS personnel. He was transported to Athens Regional Medical Center, where he received cardiac catheterization.

Before leaving Athens, Schmidt endured two surgeries — a second bypass surgery and a pacemaker and internal defibrillator installation.

Six weeks later, when MSU introduced new softball coach Vann Stuedeman, most of MSU’s coaches were on hand to welcome her.

Schmidt was there, too, showing no physical effects of open heart surgery. In fact, he told MSU Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin he walked two miles that day.

“To see him not just doing better but feeling good enough to come into work is great,” Stricklin said.

Though he can’t recall the length of time that passed while he was in cardiac arrest, Schmidt understands the mechanics of what happened.

“It couldn’t have happened in a better place,” said Schmidt, who said later learned Athens Regional Medical Center is the top cardiac facility in the area. “If this would have happened at the hotel or someplace else, I would have been a goner.”

Today, the only difference in his life is that he doesn’t run and feels minor chest pain near the surgical incision.

He walks with his wife, Jessie, in Humphrey Coliseum to maintain his cardiovascular regimen.

He doesn’t enjoy walking; he’s a runner, accustomed to logging four to five miles at a time. To Schmidt, walking takes more physical effort than running. After all, he has run 84,000 miles since he started keeping a log during his freshman year of high school, dating back 44 years.

As mundane as walking is, it’ll have to do for now.

“We did two-and-a-half miles yesterday and the pain he’s still experiencing in his chest is probably because it’s still inflamed,” Jessie said. “I think once that subsides to a level where he can accommodate it he’ll get back to running.”

His pacemaker is set for a heart rate of 200, so doctors are comfortable he can return to running full time. The defibrillator in his chest will provide the electrical jolt needed if he goes into cardiac arrest again.

“They say it’ll feel like a mule kicked me in the chest,” Schmidt said.