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“I felt like I had the flu or something,” Ward explained while describing that day.

“Didn’t have chest pain or anything. Just dropped while I was working in the cafeteria.”

Ward continued “They did CPR and couldn’t get anything And I was starting to change colors. The staff did a wonder taking care of me Making sure I’m still here.”

Ward, affectionately known as Mr. Bill around in the halls of the school, says his favorite job now is checking on the AED—making sure the battery always reads “ok.”

“Check it once a month,” he said while pointing out the battery.

School leaders say there’s one AED in every elementary and middle school, and three per high school. They were installed six years ago at a cost of $151,000.

Ward says they’re priceless.

“I think it’s a really wise investment,” he joked. “But if you need it, it’s a godsend.”

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Meanwhile, Fayette County Public Schools officials said the student received prompt treatment in accordance with established emergency action plans.

Benjamin Highland the Survivor

“How it was handled with the trainer and coaches … everything was done as it should have been done,” Fayette Schools athletics director Don Adkins said during a news conference at the school district’s central office.

Benjamin Highland, an eighth-grader at Jessie Clark, collapsed about 5:30 p.m. Monday on the baseball field at Lafayette High School, where he was participating in conditioning drills in preparation for tryouts for Lafayette’s baseball team later this month. Highland apparently planned to try out, district officials said.

Highland was rushed to the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, where he was reported in critical condition Tuesday morning. His condition was upgraded to serious Tuesday afternoon.

Fayette high schools director Mike McKenzie said a veteran high school trainer, various Lafayette coaches and passersby pitched in to help when the boy was stricken.

The trainer, Jenni Williams, directed coaches to dial 911, treated Highland with an external defibrillator and then administered CPR while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, he said. A nurse who lives in the area and was out walking her dog saw what was happening and rushed in to help with CPR, while an off-duty police officer at the scene helped by making sure the ambulance could get onto the ballfield quickly, according to McKenzie.

District officials were trying to get the nurse’s name so they could thank her.

“It really was a team effort by a lot of people on the sidelines who jumped in and helped out,” he said.

McKenzie particularly credited Williams, a veteran trainer. Williams, who serves the school district under a contract with UK, was declining comment Tuesday, university officials said.

“With the adrenalin and emotion after such an event, she was pretty shook for a while last night,” McKenzie said. “She’s fine. But in the moments after such a situation where you’ve just helped a young person survive … .

“In talking with her last night … we thanked her and told her job well done. Her first response was, ‘It was a team effort.’”

Meanwhile, Fayette middle schools director Kelley Ransdell said the district sent support staff to Jessie Clark on Tuesday morning to help faculty members in offering support to students arriving for classes. Eighth-grade teachers spent extra time with their homeroom students Tuesday morning to explain what had happened and make counseling available if requested, Ransdell said.

“District support staff … reported to me this morning that things were going really well and that students were already in the mode of preparing some get-well cards,” she said.

Ransdell said Jessie Clark students were “really concerned” about their stricken classmate, “as we all are.”

According to Fayette school district officials, Highland and at least six other eighth-graders were participating in the drills Monday when the incident occurred.

It is not unusual for talented eighth-grade players to try out for high school baseball teams. At least 10 eighth-graders were on Lafayette’s roster last year, according to the school’s Web site.

The conditioning drills at Lafayette had been going on for several days, according to district officials.

McKenzie said he didn’t know the specific kind of drills that being used Monday. But he said no “hard-running activity” was involved. According to Ransdell, the drills already had started Monday afternoon when the middle school students arrived and started to take part.

McKenzie said the players had completed a drill and were transitioning to another when Highland collapsed. “One of the kids yelled ‘Coach;’ they looked over and saw a young man start to go down,” he said.

According to McKenzie, Lafayette head baseball coach Chris Langston rushed to Highland’s side and “determined immediately that they needed the trainer and called the trainer who was just inside the gym.”

When Williams arrived, she directed an assistant coach to dial 911 and sent another to bring the defibrillator. She then began CPR, McKenzie said.

McKenzie said he didn’t know how long CPR was administered before an ambulance arrived. He also said he didn’t know how long the conditioning drills had been going on before the boy collapsed.

David Wilganowski the Survivor

But he had never seen anything like what happened in the Rangers’ game against Leander Rouse three weeks ago.

“I’ve watched it plenty of times,” Wilganowski said. “It’s eerie, but it doesn’t bother me. What am I going to do? It happened.”

What happened at Merrill Green Stadium on the night of Sept. 2 changed Wilganowski’s life. But his life didn’t end, thanks to medical personnel with the necessary equipment and training.

Wilganowski collapsed on the field in the fourth quarter of a tied game and went into cardiac arrest. Rudder trainer Jamie Woodall and her staff used an automated external defibrillator (AED) to restart Wilganowski’s heart. He was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph Regional Health Center, then later that night was flown by helicopter to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Eleven days later at Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Wilganowski underwent surgery in which a defibrillator was placed in his chest. He was released from the hospital and visited Rudder’s football practice the next day, and two days after that he was on the sideline cheering for his teammates as they played Houston C.E. King last Friday in their first game back at Merrill Green Stadium since the incident.

Wilganowski’s memory of his final game is like a video with a segment deleted. He remembers everything before the game, through three quarters and into the fourth period. Wilganowski does not remember the defensive series when Rudder forced the punt play after which he collapsed.

Woodall remembers that play. As is her habit, Woodall scanned the field, checking to make sure all the players got up. The last player she saw was Wilganowski, far from the football, toppling forward like a giant tree, unable to extend his arms to cushion the fall.

“I didn’t wait for a referee’s signal or anything,” Woodall said. “I ran out there. He was having trouble breathing, and when we turned him over he took his last breath.”

Woodall tears up at the memory. She and Bryan trainer Josh Woodall, her husband, are committee members of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. Even before Nader’s incident, the Woodalls made sure there were AEDs at Bryan and Consolidated. Woodall was an assistant trainer with the Tigers when Nader collapsed.

“Knowing that behind me there were all these BISD employees making those phone calls and taking care of those things like getting the gates opened and barricades removed … knowing that was going on behind me was very comforting.” Woodall said.

Rudder assistant trainer Mike Lozano used scissors to remove Wilganowski’s jersey and shoulder pads. Woodall applied the AED, which works automatically and is different from the paddle-style device that most people picture when they think of defibrillators.

The crowd fell silent as the slender young woman began chest compression on the player, with some fans openly praying. Woodall had never used an AED to revive anyone.

“Every experience I’ve had as well as every training I’ve ever been in certainly prepared me for that moment,” Woodall said. “I’m very, very proud to say that in both incidents, with Matt and David, there was good protocol, there was preparation and there were athletic trainers on site to get those things rolling in the right direction.”

Woodall makes sure to share credit for Wilganowski’s treatment. She invited all 17 of Rudder’s student trainers to the Bryan school board meeting Tuesday when she and her staff were honored for helping Wilganowski.

“It is a good recognition for athletic trainers and that’s what I would like for people to take from this,” Woodall said. “Not just that proper protocol was followed, but that there were trained professionals there. Not everybody has that. There are many stories of people who didn’t make it, where there were no athletic trainers or AEDs, or if there were, no one thought to go get it.”

“I don’t feel cheated at all, because I’m still here,” Wilganowski said. “I do feel like I didn’t get as much accomplished as I wanted to, but I can do more with this [experience] than I could with football.

“I have mechanical engineering down [as my major]. Who knows? Some day I could be designing these,” he said, tapping his chest over the defibrillator.

Wilganowski hopes his story will help spread the word about the importance of having AEDs at athletic competitions and of training school personnel to handle life-threatening situations.

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The airport said that the woman appeared to faint, while standing in the security screening line.

A nurse practitioner and an EMT who were off duty, were on hand and jumped over to help.

A TSA worker grabbed the AED from the first floor, and the team was able to revive the woman.

Airport officials said that when Gold Cross responded, they said it looked like the woman’s pacemaker failed.

The 148th Fighter Wing fire department also responded. They said on Monday it appeared the woman would be OK.

The airport said she was from the Detroit area.

The airport had the AED installed in 2005.

“We have training each year. We’re glad it saved a life,” said Blaine Peterson, facilities manager.

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The teacher, whose name and other health details have not been released, was taken to Palos Community Hospital by paramedics and is now in stable condition, said school nurse Anne Connelly-Mitros.

The teacher was sitting in her chair in a classroom with students when she fell to the floor without warning. Students were moved out of the classroom and Connelly-Mitros reported with the defibrillator.

“The AED was used on her because I did not feel a pulse,” she said, adding that it was the first time school officials have used one of its AED’s in an emergency.

“Once I realized it was a life or death situation, I just got into a mode that we had to do what we had to do,” she said. “We were very organized and it worked out very well.”

A social worker spoke with students from the class and made calls to their parents to explain what happened. Asst. Principal Annette Szczasny said the students were concerned about their teacher but they are being updated on her condition.

“We have let them know that she is in good hands and that there is constant contact between her family and the school,” she said.

As the day was winding down, Connolly-Mitros said the school was filled with a sense of relief that staff members had acted quickly and that their colleague was OK.

“We’re very, very happy here today,” she said. “As terrible as the situation is, it went smoothly.”

Superintendent Mike Byrne said he was thankful for the quick thinking of the school’s staff and for the defibrillator.

“It seems to me it really prevented something that could have been tragic,” he said. “We’re glad the AEDs are here and they did what they were supposed to do.”

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The violence-prevention educator with the nonprofit Community for New Direction was working with students at Ohio Avenue Elementary School on the city’s East Side. Then her heart stopped.

Robbin Goods the Survivor and Tamara Harris the Saviour

“They said I was laughing, and I sort of just keeled over,” Goods said recently.

She was told that a nurse grabbed the school’s automatic external defibrillator — a device that delivers an electrical shock to stabilize heart rhythm — and attached it to Goods’ chest.

“After it shocked me the first time, I sort of came to,” she said.

Goods, 35, was taken to Grant Medical Center and was kept under observation for a week. She said doctors weren’t sure why she went into cardiac arrest but told her the school’s defibrillator kept her alive.

In Upper Arlington, where dozens of the devices have been placed in schools and city buildings, training is now part of monthly CPR classes.

“Most communities could probably benefit from it,” said Chris Moore, the training and EMS lieutenant for the Upper Arlington Fire Department.

Sayre compares the defibrillators to fire extinguishers and said the value of the equipment is appreciated only when something bad happens.

“The number (of AEDs) is increasing, but it’s still far too low,” he said.

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A couple of parents milled about in the hallways. Teachers were shutting down their classrooms. And Rhonda Smith, who came to the school that September evening to recruit Cub Scouts to her troop, was packing up materials.

Then Smith collapsed.

Two friends — J.R. and Tracy Hatfield — realized Smith, a 47-year-old mother of three, had experienced a heart attack. They began CPR and called the school’s staff into action.

“We did what my registered nurse trained us to do,” principal Tracy Graziaplene recalled.

They grabbed the school’s automatic external defibrillator, made sure someone had contacted 911, and got to work.

“That wonderful machine started talking to us,” Graziaplene said, referring to the AED’s robotic instructions. “It has everything there.”

Northwest was the first elementary school in Pasco County to get a defibrillator, about a year earlier. Last fall it became the first Pasco school to record a “save” using one.

“People were on campus ready to respond,” district nursing supervisor Lisa Kern said. “It was a wonderful thing.”

After four months of recovery, Smith visited the School Board on Tuesday to offer her thanks.

“Without that machine in the school, I wouldn’t have even been alive to get into the ambulance,” Smith, who “coded” at least seven times on the way to the hospital, said after the meeting. “I’m grateful for the taxpayers paying their taxes … to keep (the defibrillators) up to do the job. I’m so grateful for everyone.”

Smith, who now has an internal defibrillator, says the district expense is worth it if it saves another life.

“You’ve got to think of the budget cuts. I deal with budget cuts with my own kids,” she said. “I know there’s people out there who don’t feel the AED’s are necessary. … But what is a life worth? It’s like love, it’s unconditional.”

Given a new lease on her life, Smith said she intends to pay it forward. By no means a wealthy woman, she plans to do so with her time and energy, working with people who have handicaps.

“I think that’s why God put me here on this earth,” she said, listing among her projects the creation of a “special needs” Girl Scout troop.

Smith also works as a personal care assistant and supports her 13-year-old daughter, Katelynn, who’s a special needs cheerleader and Special Olympics athlete. She has been spending more time with her husband, Dwight, and their sons Alvin and Matthew.

And she has a new, less stressful outlook on the world.

“I’m closer to God. I’m closer to my children. I’m closer to my husband. I’m closer to the beauty of life,” Smith said. “I’m just happy to be alive.”

“I was just looking at him and it seemed like he just took his last breath and it was like, uhhhh.”

Deanna “Dee” Norflee, never thought she would have to use an Automatic External Defibrillator or an A-E-D. She got training in March on the machine and in November she had to use it.

Bart Skinner the Survivor with Deanna Norflee the Saviour

“I came into the gym and I saw him kneeling over right here in this exact spot,” she says.

Bart Skinner, 55, was just playing basketball on the same hard wood floors LeBron James did when he lived in Akron.

“My buddy’s girlfriend looked at me and said, ‘Bart you don’t look too good,’ and she said I told her I don’t feel good and that’s about all I remember.”

A call to 9-1-1 and the decision to grab the A-E-D saved Skinner’s life.

“When it said press the button we are ready to go,” said Norflee.

Bart was out for three minutes before being treated by the AED.

E-M-S arrived in minutes and took over the situation.

Bart is alive, and well and thankful for AED’s

“I think there a blessing and I’m glad for them and I’m glad I have training on them,” says Skinner.

After 7 years reporting for CBS News in New York, Susan came home to Pittsburgh and joined KDKA-TV last fall.

Susan Koeppen the Survivor

Life was kind of chaotic, but in a good way. She was busy with work, busy with her husband Jim; and especially with their three little kids. On top of all that, Susan had begun training for a half-marathon. She’d just run a 5K in October; and on November 20th, she hooked up with her friends and fellow runners, Gabey Gosman and Beth Sutton. “Hey let’s go out for a couple of miles, do a couple miles on a Sunday morning,” Susan recounts. “Go home, go on with our day.”

It seemed like a good plan — at least until the women were on the home stretch on Negley Avenue in Shadyside. Beth had just asked Susan if she was OK, having noticed that she didn’t look good. “She said ‘ No, no. Old girl’s gonna power through.’ I said alright so we kept running.”

In fact, Beth says Susan surged ahead of her friends; but then, stopped. “[She] put her hands on her knees and kind of bent over like she was trying to catch her breath, then she put her right hand back and kind of sat herself back down on the ground and lay down. And knowing Susan, she’s kinda funny anyways, so I… ran upon her and said , ‘Susan, that was quite a burst of energy you had there,’ and she was gasping for air just like she was winded and out of breath. And I bent over her and I looked down. I said, ‘Do you need some water?’ and she didn’t respond. She was still gasping for air, so I put my arm underneath her back and I lifted her up cause I had a water bottle on my arm and I said – I looked at her again, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, Gabey, there’s something wrong,’ and at that point her eyes rolled in the back of her head and I laid her down and she started to convulse.”

Gabey happens to be a physician — a fertility specialist. As a doctor, she knew this was a serious situation; but it was still hard for her to comprehend. “I think there’s an element of denial because it’s a friend who’s young and healthy, and there’s like a bunch of ‘this is not happening.’”

But it quickly became clear that it was a life or death emergency and they needed help. They flagged down Vanessa Franco and Ranmal Samarasinghe, who pulled over to find Susan in cardiac arrest and turning blue.

As third year medical students, they’d done CPR plenty of times — on mannequins; but never on a human being. “I was taking her pulse and watching her breathe while [Vanessa] was doing the compressions,” Ranmal explained. “And I was just trying so hard,” Vanessa added, “and I kept yelling her name ‘cause someone told me her name was Susan, so I just kept yelling, ‘Come on, come on Susan!’… I was terrified of losing her and I mean, I mean, I don’t know — I just went into automatic mode and just like did everything I could.”

Responding to a neighbor’s 911 call, Lt. Dan Elias’ crew from the city’s Engine 8 arrived. “We jumped out of the rig and pretty much, there wasn’t a word spoken, really.”

Elias took over the compressions, while William Gorham and John Mares hooked up an automatic external defibrillator. They shocked Susan’s heart, right there on the sidewalk; but even after, to Vanessa, it didn’t look good. Maybe she remembered learning that nine out of ten people who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital don’t make it.

“I’ve seen people get shocked and suddenly come, you know, have a lot more life to them — and she wasn’t,” Vanessa explained, “and I was like, I was just deathly afraid for her.”

Everyone there was afraid; except for Susan. “It didn’t really happen to me; it did, but it didn’t,” Susan recalled. “I feel sorry for these guys and for my husband. They were with me, she was cradling me in her arms as I was dying — that’s something she’s never gonna forget and she’s not gonna get that out of her mind; and my husband ran to the scene and saw me on the ground. He’s never gonna forget that. They can’t get it out of their minds, but for me it was just black.”

Because she didn’t come to, the immediate fear as she arrived at Shadyside Hospital was brain damage. No one had to explain that to Susan’s husband, Jim O’Toole — himself an M.D. He estimated that Susan’s heart had stopped or been short-circuiting for about six minutes. “The terrifying thing — aside from the whole experience — is when you get outside of five minutes, the potential for severe brain injury goes up significantly ,” Jim added, “and if you get beyond 7 minutes, meaningful recovery is not expected.”

Doctors then began chilling her body — a protective therapy that greatly reduced her need for oxygen.

Her fate would be a mystery for at least 24 hours. “That whole time frame, I have no idea what’s gonna be at the end of it,” added Jim. “I don’t know what her brain function’s going to be — is it going to be Susan or some, some awfully intangible version of her that’s not the woman I married — and that was as tough as anything.”

His thoughts turned to their three children. “I had to legitimately decide or think about whether or not I was capable of being a single father of three, the oldest of which was 6, and having that be a legitimate thought and having to concretely think about that and then think about what the next step would be is not an easy thing to think about.”

As Susan emerged from the therapeutic hypothermia, she gradually became more responsive. Jim was there when her respirator was removed and she spoke for the first time.

She didn’t know she was in the hospital or what had happened to put her there.

“The only word that really explains it is desperation,” Jim said. “I went from that to being the happiest man on the planet, because I realized we had just been lucky enough to survive through something we had no business surviving through.”

“We talk about it a lot, which is actually — is therapeutic, you know.” Susan said — choking up a little. “You know, I have not gotten emotional at all about it, but sitting here with these guys and knowing that, you now, we just went for a run that day. We’re just three moms chugging along and you know, I went down for the count. How does that happen? Wow. But I’m here. Obviously, it wasn’t my time.”

This was not a typical heart attack due to blocked arteries or an unhealthy lifestyle. Doctors blamed it on a heart abnormality Susan knew about. She now has a new little “appliance” in her chest and she’s facing heart surgery to repair a faulty cardiac valve.

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“My best friend is there on that wall,” the fitness instructor said, pointing to the defibrillator hanging outside the community arenas at the WFCU Centre where she teaches fitness classes and staffs the reception desk.

Rose Wood the Saviour

On Friday at around 8 p.m., she was at the desk when a man ran out of a pickup hockey game telling her to call 911. Another player had collapsed on his way off the ice.

Right away, Wood’s safety training and her people-organizing skills kicked in.

“It was a team effort,” the 54-year-old grandmother of four boys said.

She instructed the other desker to call an ambulance, grabbed the defibrillator off the wall, rushed into the arena to where the man — who she can only describe as in his 40s and little heavy — was lying on the black rubber floor.

“I just did it,” Wood said, describing how she got down on the ground, shouted for help to get the man’s hockey jersey off, and asked a woman nearby to help her put the defibrillator pads on the man’s chest and under his right arm.

The other 20 or so people were told to stand back when she pressed the button on the defibrillator to release the electric charge.

“He jumped,” Wood said about the shock sent to the man’s heart. “I had never seen that before.”

She gave mouth-to-mouth while she instructed the woman nearby — whom Wood said she did not recognize, but would like to thank for her help — to do chest compressions on the man.

“It seemed like hours,” Wood said. “I yelled, ‘Where is that ambulance?’”

One player was posted to the arena entrance to hail the ambulance, a second was given the task of clearing a path in the crowd for the paramedics, and a third was told to help emergency workers cross the ice safely.

Doug Sweet, who manages the arena, said he could not confirm who the man was or where he was taken to hospital, but he said he believed he was taken to a hospital in Detroit.

“We know he’s doing well,” Sweet said, adding that all the staff are very proud of how Wood managed the situation.

“I just bawled my eyes out,” Wood said, describing her reaction once the paramedics took over. “I couldn’t stop,” she said, adding that she was still shaking a little on Monday night.

Wood regularly goes through safety training as a fitness instructor, but she has never had to put her skills into practice in real life, she said, despite having worked in this field since 1987.

“I never want to do it again, but if I have to, I have no qualms,” she said. In fact, she added jokingly, she wants to find out just how long the whole process took so that if she has to do it again, she can beat her time.

Wood joked that the defibrillator is the real hero of the story and thinks she might give the little machine a name, but the experience has made her more aware of where defibrillators are in public places, whether it’s at the mall where she was running errands on the weekend, or at the arena where her grandchildren play hockey in Belle River.

The arena has eight defibrillators, Sweet said, adding that since it opened, there have been six heart attacks.

With thousands of people attending games and playing games each night, he said, it’s almost inevitable one will happen at some point, but thanks to the defibrillators and trained staff, the arena is prepared for this type of emergency.

The staff are trained annually in CPR and defibrillator use and undergo quarterly emergency training.

“Everybody in these situations works as a team,” Sweet said.