First Aid Corps

On May 3, 62-year-old Bucks County school coach John Gleeson was throwing batting practice in the left-field batting cage.

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Standing about 45 feet from the batter, shielded by an L-shaped screen commonly used by teams, Gleeson was pitching to Jake Skolnick – “our hardest hitter,” co-coach Vince Campellone said.

John Gleeson the Survivor

Campellone then heard the clang of a line drive hitting a bar of the screen.

Turning toward the cage, Campellone saw Gleeson facedown on the ground, his body twitching.

Campellone ran over and yelled for players to get the trainer.
Campellone rolled Gleeson onto his back, opened his mouth, and made sure he wouldn’t swallow his tongue.

Tyler Campellone, Vince’s son and a sophomore outfielder on the team who recently took a CPR course, started resuscitation.

Trainer Juana Bivins ran over from the gym behind center field, and used the defibrillator on Gleeson. A student trainer called Gleeson’s wife, Connie, who works at the school’s Children’s Center, and she arrived just in time to see a shock from the defibrillator jump-start his heart.

“It was very fortuitous the way that things fell,” John Gleeson said. “I could have been [at home] mowing the grass all by myself and had my blocked arteries kicked in, and I would have been in pretty bad shape because there would have been no one around. As it was, getting hit in the head with a line drive was almost a blessing in disguise, because it kicked off this whole series of things.”

Gleeson was rushed to the nearby St. Mary Medical Center. Five of his arteries were blocked.

Gleeson wants to return to coaching this fall for his son’s last football season, saying he has dreamed about it for a long time. If his heart exams go well, he could be ready for the mid-August start of practices. But if doctors say he needs a defibrillator implanted, he likely will miss the opening of the preseason.

As for Skolnick, the player who hit the fateful line drive, Gleeson said the senior went through the instinctual “Oh, my God, what have I done?” phase.

“But as I’ve told him and everybody has told him since,” Gleeson added, “it was a blessing in disguise, that in some ways you set off a series of events that probably will prolong my life for quite a while.”

Hunter Cairns plays high school baseball in Los Alamitos.

Hunter Cairns the Survivor

Last July, Cairns was at bat and attempting to bunt, but the pitch came in low and fast, smacking him hard in the chest.

Cairns’ grandfather, Jack Lee, retired from the Long Beach Fire Department, his grandfather’s friend, Steve Roberts, an active duty fireman with the LBFD, and his dad, Jason, were watching from the third base line and knew it was a wallop.

Cairns ran about 50 feet toward first base and collapsed face down in the dirt.

When the first base coach turned Cairns onto his back, he took one look at Cairns’ face and shouted for someone to call 911.

Lee and Roberts rushed to Cairns. They ripped open his shirt to look for broken ribs, but saw none. Lee started chest compressions while Roberts performed rescue breaths.

When paramedics arrived, they told the men to continue performing CPR while they began defibrillation.

After the first shock, Cairns started breathing on his own. He was taken to a hospital, where he regained consciousness 17 hours later.

Bentonville junior baseball player, Wes Busby, 17, collapsed as the Tigers ran during a warmup for practice at Tiger Athletic Complex.

A teammate standing near Busby found a faint and erratic heartbeat.

Assistant baseball coach Curt Yarrington and athletic trainer Laura Wilson started CPR while baseball coach Todd Abbott called 911.

Emergency medical technicians arrived within five minutes and used a defibrillator to stabilize Busby’s heartbeat.

“I don’t think (the response) could have been any better,” Abbott said. “I think everybody kept a level head and did what they had to do and worked together. It is such a blessing that it happened that way.”

Busby was taken to Northwest Medical Center where he was kept stable and eventually taken to ACH by ambulance later that night.

After running several tests, doctors at ACH believe Wes Busby has Long QT Syndrome, a heart condition associated with ventricular arrhythmias.

He had surgery last week to place an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which will help the heart return to normal function if another arrhythmia should occur.

“A lot of things had to happen just right,” Murray Busby said. “If it would have been a situation where nobody knew what was going on, nobody knew what was happening and just stood there, he wouldn’t be with us today. I’m not going to try to sugarcoat it or anything, because there were a lot of good people there that took care of him until the EMTs got there and took over.”

Luis Rubio has, a sophomore baseball player at Trimble Tech High School, was running around the track Sept. 10 when he suddenly dropped to the ground.

Luis Rubio the Survivor with Coaches

“I was running, and I felt light-headed and blacked out,” Rubio said.

Coach Tyson Wormsbaker was just feet away.

“He stopped breathing,” Wormsbaker said. “His heart wasn’t beating, just bad stuff; the worst thing you’d want to see.”

The coach didn’t have much time to decide what to do.

“I just reacted,” he said. “I checked his pulse. I checked his breathing. He wasn’t doing either. So I started CPR immediately.”

Coach Mike Garza raced over to help.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life. Watching a 15-year-old struggle like that…” Garza could not finish his sentence as his eyes filled up with tears.

Meanwhile, a third coach, Jason Braud, ran to get an automated external defibrillator, or AED, while summoning others to call 911.

The coaches used the device to administer an electric shock to Rubio’s chest.

“As soon as he was shocked by the AED, it was within a second or two, and he woke up,” Wormsbaker said. “He wanted to get up.”

“When I woke up, I wanted to get up,” Rubio said.

Rubio spent the next 16 days in the hospital and now has a small defibrillator implanted in his chest.

Rubio, who was born with defective heart valves, said the coaches saved his life.

“I’m very thankful for what they did,” he said. “Without them I wouldn’t be here. Without the defibrillator, I wouldn’t be here.”

A lifelong Reds fan, Mr. Charles Trimble was at the game between the Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds with his wife, Sharon, and their 4-year-old grandson.

CharlesTtrimble the Survivor

As the game was under way, Mrs. Trimble took their grandson to buy a toy.

While they were gone, her husband started feeling short of breath. The family in front of him asked if he was OK, but instead of answering, he slumped over in his seat and his face turned gray.

Luckily for him, the president and scientific director of Allegheny General Hospital’s Allegheny-Singer Research Institute was sitting 40 feet away. He saw the situation and rushed over to perform CPR and chest compressions.

After a few minutes of compressions, Dr. Christopher Post, a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist and a colonel in the Army Reserves, saw Mr. Trimble, a retired Air Force major, grimace. It was a good sign, he said.

PNC staff members and paramedics arrived with a portable defibrillator, one of more than a dozen in the ballpark.

Mr. Trimble was taken to Allegheny General Hospital in an ambulance

Yesterday, he was sitting up in bed, surrounded by family members, and talking. He doesn’t remember anything from the baseball game, but his doctors said the short-term memory loss is to be expected.

Through tears, Mr. Trimble described how thankful he was to Dr. Post for responding so quickly.

“He was a total stranger, and I’m just fortunate that he was in attendance and knew what to do,” he said.

“He was in behind me and saw me slump over and turn totally white,” Trimble said of Post. “He knew exactly what happened. I turned white. He knew it was critical, and he saved my life.”