First Aid Corps

St. Benedict’s parishioner Mary Louise Perez was in the choir loft during Mass on Sunday when Father Andrew McGuire collapsed mid-service in full view of the congregation.

“He was just turning from the altar and walked to the end to sit down in his chair,” Perez said. “He just keeled over right flat on his face.”

According to Montebello city fire Battalion Chief Rick Lynski, personnel from Engine 55 responded to St. Benedict’s Catholic Church following reports of an about 80-year-old man down at about 10:44 a.m.

Montebello police officers were already on scene and using a device known as an automated exterior defibrillator on McGuire. Lysnki said the patient had no pulse.

Prior to taking the clergyman to the hospital, Lynski said a pulse was established and by the time he arrived at the emergency room, McGuire was conscious and speaking.

Perez, 78 and her husband Joe, 82, who have sung in the choir at St. Benedict’s for the past six years, said an unknown parishioner began administering CPR before emergency personnel arrived. Joe Perez said he later saw emergency workers using the defibrillator on McGuire.

“I saw them give (McGuire) a shock because I saw his legs kick out,” he said.

A woman who answered the phone at St. Benedict’s on Monday and declined to give her name said the pastor was in intensive care but added he was in stable condition.

Rose Lopez, who works in the parish rectory, said she did not know the name of the individual who rendered aid before police and firefighters arrived.

As the operations manager for Thanksgiving! Lutheran Church, Harold Carlson had a number of things on his mind on 28th December 2009 – clearing the parking lot from the Christmas snowstorm, preparing for the annual fiscal report that was less than a month away, managing the day-to-day functions of the church.

Harold’s son, Rob Carlson, also works at T!LC. As a jack-of-all-trades handyman, Rob Carlson answers directly to his father but, on any given day, may be on the other side of the church grounds and only see him a handful of times.

Having just unloaded the first pallet of salt, Harold and Rob slid into the pickup at a few minutes before 4 p.m. to make another run. Driving up the road leading away from the church, Rob said he and his dad were just having a normal conversation toward the end of a long day.

As he turned the corner on to Lexington Avenue and headed toward the intersection of 36th Street, though, everything changed.

When Harold slouched over, Rob said his first thought was that his dad might just be nodding off after a strenuous afternoon. But when he started gasping for breath, Rob knew something was wrong with his father.

Rob Carlson didn’t even turn the truck around. Throwing it into reverse, he made his way back Lexington Avenue, rushing to get help for his father. The first person he came upon was Bob Belsaas, a part-time maintenance man at the church, the Air Force retiree and Vietnam veteran.

Rob told him something was wrong with his dad and that he needed help. As Rob drove the truck back toward the T!LC offices, Belsaas parked his tractor and ran in the same direction.

Susan Westland was wrapping up her first day as a vicar at T!LC. At the offices, she was gathering her things in anticipation of her son coming to pick her up when, all of a sudden she heard a scream from one of the office workers in the front. Someone was yelling for help.

Westland ran to the front of the building where Rob Carlson told her that his dad was in the truck unresponsive. As Rob called 911, Westland rushed out where, seeing Harold’s ashen face and recognizing that look from a similar situation she’d been in years before, she realized that he was in terrible trouble and immediately checked for a pulse.

There was none.

Belsaas had arrived at the truck and the two of them proceeded to lift Harold and lay him on top of their coats on the ground outside of the T!LC offices.

“I prayed to God and I said, ‘God, this is not working,’” Westland recalled of the moment she knew that Harold could be dying right in front of her on that cold sidewalk. “Instantly I saw the letters ‘AED’ flash into my head and I said out loud, ‘AED, AED, I wish we had an AED machine.’ Rob was standing behind me and he said, ‘We do.’”

Covering the 150 yards from the offices to the church in what must have seemed to him like an eternity but what Westland and Belsaas called an instant, Rob Carlson retrieved the defibrillator. Just as they were starting to set it up and attach the electrodes to Harold’s chest, a paramedic from the Bellevue Fire Department arrived at the scene.

Having heard the emergency call go out, the paramedic, instead of first responding to the fire station, had recognized the address and gone straight to the church. Westland and the paramedic attached the device to Harold’s chest, administering a first shock to his heart.

Right around that time, the Bellevue rescue squad arrived at the scene and took over.

Harold was transported to Midlands Hospital where he was stabilized. He was then taken to Bergan Mercy Medical Center where he underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

He choked back tears as he acknowledged everyone who had been involved in saving his life, saying he was not afraid of death but feared leaving behind a loving wife, three wonderful sons, their wives and eight grandchildren who, like he had, might only have remembered their grandfather through pictures and stories.

“Then you realize how precious life really is,” he said. “And how quickly it can be taken from you.”

On Oct. 5, the Knights were about 15 minutes into a routine practice at Crestwood Baptist Church when 17-year-old Josh Howard fell to the floor.

OKC Knight coach Randy Graham, had his back to Howard at the time but was quickly by Josh’s side.

“I picked up his head and thought he was having a seizure,” Graham said. “His jaw was just clinched tight, and his arms were locked up near his chest.”

Graham worked to give Howard breaths while 911 was called. Most of Howard’s Knights teammates were on the floor almost immediately after Howard went down, praying for their fallen teammate.

Paramedics were at Howard’s side in less than 10 minutes.

Twice before leaving the gym, Howard received shocks from a defibrillator. He had to be shocked another time when he got to the hospital.

First, he was taken to St. Anthony’s. Doctors there determined the damage to his heart was too severe for them to treat, so once he was stabilized, he was moved to Children’s Hospital.

For three days, Howard remained in a coma. Graham walked into the hospital room at about 7:30 a.m. that morning. “Hey, Coach,” Howard said as he rolled over. If nothing else, Howard was awake and alert.

“There’s no other word to describe it other than grateful,” Graham said. “I’m so thankful, and I know that Jack and Debbie Howard, his parents, are as well.”

“On Oct. 5, I was hoping he would live. I had no hope that he would live. He was blue. I couldn’t even have dreamed of him being where he is right now. We call him our miracle.”

It all started when Leon Kogler, 78, suddenly slouched over on his side while kneeling in prayer during the church service at the Immaculate Conception Church in Sheboygan.

Leon Kogler (2nd from left) the Survivor

Those around him thought he’d fainted, but Shelley Hittman, 36, — who teaches CPR for the Red Cross and is a trained first responder — knew better.

“We took one look and said, ‘This isn’t good,’” Hittman said.

She and her husband Todd, 38, who’s a volunteer firefighter and trained EMT, performed CPR and shocked him with the church’s just-installed automated defibrillator.

Delorme, a Sheboygan firefighter, helped with CPR.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Kogler was breathing and had a heartbeat.

Kogler was later transported to Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee, where he underwent bypass surgery.

“To me they’re heroes,” said Kogler, with his wife Helen, 75. “They saved my life.”

73-year-old Carl Benson and his wife were attending Sunday morning services at Black Rock Congregational Church when Benson collapsed, his heart stopped and he stopped breathing, church officials said.

“It started at the first hymn we were singing standing up,” Jeanette Benson recalled. “I saw commotion up at front, and I knew where he was sitting so I knew something was wrong.”

Other parishioners quickly carried him into another room just off the sanctuary and that’s where the miracle happened.

About a year ago, Black Rock bought an emergency defibrillator and, as luck would have it, a visiting physician Dr. Federico Vaca an emergency physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and a nurse were in the congregation when Benson became ill.

They used the defibrillator to administer a shock to Benson’s heart. It worked.

The ailing parishioner coughed and then began to breathe on his own before emergency crews showed up and rushed him to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery.

“They couldn’t have been any quicker,” Jeanette Benson said of the response. After the defibrillator shock was administered, she heard someone say her husband’s color was returning. “I heard him start coughing. The nurses reassured me that’s a good sign.”

“It’s a miracle,” Jeanette Benson said emphatically Tuesday as she recounted the whirl of events that, in reality, took no more than 10 minutes.

He is now recuperating.

To Jeanette Benson, acutely conscious that such an emergency could have befallen her husband as he drove on the Merritt Parkway and with no immediate assistance available, it is all a sign that the Lord was looking out for him.

“His hand was in it all the way,” she said.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Mr and Mrs Seifer

Adam and Jane Olsen were at Jesse Lee April 19, preparing for the baptism of their children Allyson, 3, and infant, Jazlyn. The baptism had been originally scheduled in May but was moved at the last minute. They had arrived at the service a little early with a group of family and friends to make sure they had seats.

The Olsens’ friend, Katie White, was outside the church with her daughter as Ms. Seifer collapsed. Ms. White called for help.

Mr. Olsen is a cardiology physician assistant and several other family members are in the medical field, including his cousin Joe Lodato, who is an EMT in Westchester.

Mr. Lodato began mouth-to-mouth and Mr. Olsen administered chest compression.

Paramedics Michael Drake, Capt. Rick Lawlor, medic Bob Coppola and Nick D’Angelo arrived with an ambulance carrying state-of-the-art cardiopulmonary resuscitation equipment.

EMTs delivered defibrillation three times on the scene and got Ms. Seifer’s pulse back.

“You were feisty — that’s what they called you,” Chief Burford said to Ms. Seifer at their home last week. “You tried to take the breathing tube out so you could breath on your own — that’s a very good sign. You weren’t even in the hospital yet when the doctor took the tube out.”

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Mr. Seifer told his wife. “Her friends came here to tell me she had no pulse and was on her way to the hospital.”

When Mr. Seifer arrived his wife was awake but a little confused.

“If a defibrillator had been there we could have gotten her back even sooner,” he said.

“They [rescue workers] jump-started my heart,” Ms. Seifer said. “It was an electrical failure of the body.”

“It was truly miraculous,” Mr. Seifer said.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Victor Quick was at Antioch Baptist Church on March 1 when he “fell out.”

Quick is the city of Graham’s utilities director. Members of the church and some who were also members of the White Cross Fire Department leapt into action, performing CPR.

That immediate action was credited with saving Quick’s life.

On Tuesday, the city council issued proclamations honoring the 12 people who “participated in saving Victor Quick’s life.” They included David Atwater, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church; Kay Hammond, church member; Jerry Lloyd, church member and chief of the White Cross Fire Department; Warren Atwater, deputy chief and church member; Greg Tilley and Robert Smith, retired from White Cross and church members; Jeff Mooney, captain and Jason Andrews, lieutenant at White Cross; and first responders David Nichols, Tony Blake, Karen Durham and Chris Miller. Miller was in church that morning to be baptized.

“The doctor says there was no damage to my heart,” Quick said and then joshed, “even with a broken sternum and four ribs” from treatment.

Quick said he was in a controlled coma for a few days and credited the defibrillators with saving his life.

Lloyd said the first responders used a defibrillator three times on Quick to get a response.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Gary Jarvis with wife and 6 grandchildren

In a pickup basketball game, Gary Jarvis jumped for the rebound. The heart attack seized him mid-air and stopped him. 

Perrin, a labor and delivery nurse at Fairview Ridges in Burnsville, was in the sanctuary, setting up for the Bible study group, which draws about 200 women.

About 6:40 p.m., a man ran into the sanctuary crying out: “We have a man down! We need help!”

On the gym floor of Berean Baptist Church, the 59-year-old Burnsville man lay dying.

The study group’s emergency plan kicked in. Perrin bolted into the gym. She saw men trying to pick up Jarvis’s limp body and told them to set him down and roll him over. The nurse laid her fingers on his neck, searching for the feel of blood rhythmically coursing through the carotid artery.

Nothing. He had no pulse. His eyes stared blankly, and his face was cut.

Deanne Adams, a licensed practical nurse from Farmington, ran up as Perrin knelt at Jarvis’ side. As Perrin dug out an oxygen mask, Adams began compressing.

One man had called 911, and another fetched the church’s automatic external defibrillator. The nurses pulled up Jarvis’ shirt, ready to try to jump-start his heart. But the batteries had been checked so often that they had no juice.

“Resume CPR!” Perrin said.

Two more registered nurses, Shawn Dietz of Elko and Kim Lorence of Apple Valley, ran into the gym. Dietz took over compressions. Perrin kept counting in a fast meter. Adams prayed in Jarvis’ ear.

Minutes later, paramedic Andy Hamlin and three other Burnsville firefighters rushed in.

“This man had everything going for him,” Hamlin said. “First, he had a cardiac arrest in a church; I can’t think of a better place to have one. Secondly, he had those highly skilled nurses who were there.”

The paramedics found Jarvis’ heart fluttering but not pumping. They hooked up their defibrillator and sent a shock across his chest.

Jarvis’ heartbeat resumed. He clenched his jaw. And then, he gasped.

Recently, as the Burnsville City Council honored the nurses for valor, Jarvis thanked them, too:

“At this time of year, we hear a lot about angels,” Jarvis told the women.

“Angels make announcements, angels sing songs of worship and praise, but I now think that angels do CPR. You are my angels of rescue; you are my heroes. I will be forever grateful. And my gratitude will be especially evident to me this Christmas when I see the joy in the faces of my family, in the faces of my grandchildren. I will enjoy another Christmas because you were quick and capable.”

Connie Perrin, a registered nurse from Prior Lake who led the rescue, said she’s elated that the nurses were able to help keep a family intact.

“It was God’s hand that he be there and collapse while we were there, because we knew what to do,” she said.

“I’m a Christian, so I believe this is a miracle that these ladies were there, and God had his hand in it,” Jarvis said. “It could have happened on the way home. It could have happened in the night. But it happened where there was help.”

Two weeks after his near death, Jarvis and wife Jennifer visited the Bible study group. He carried flowers for the nurses, who rushed to him, overjoyed to see him in good health.

“It was just the most beautiful gift from God,” Adams said.