First Aid Corps

Chris Campbell, 17, crumpled to the ground shortly after a group of Bedford athletes started stretching at the school just after 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“It was a voluntary pre-conditioning workout for all athletes,” said Mark German, who has been recommended to replace the retired Bill Regnier as Bedford’s athletic director. “They were just stretching when he collapsed. I understand that he wasn’t feeling well going into the workout.”

“I looked back and he just had collapsed. He was laying on the ground and he started to have a seizure,” his cousin Daniel Campbell, Jr. said.

Football coaches Lou Nickle and John Groll began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately.

“Lou and John were just fantastic,” Bedford head coach Jeff Wood said. “Without those two jumping right on and doing CPR, he would be in far worse shape.

“They did everything right. They are great men. The jumped right in without even thinking.”

Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lestock was patrolling just a half-mile away from the high school when the call came in. He was in the scene in minutes.

Deputy Lestock retrieved an automated external defibrillator from his cruiser and used it on Campbell.

“He was down and not breathing,” Lestock said. “Luckily, we were right around the corner. That’s probably what saved him.

“Two coaches were already doing CPR. I got out my AED just like we are trained and hooked it up like I have numerous times before and shocked him.”

The Bedford Fire Department and Monroe Community Ambulance arrived moments later. the time Campbell was loaded into an ambulance, he was breathing on his own.

Lestock, who has been a Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy for 15 years, was impressed with the way that the coaches, firemen and paramedics handled the situation.

“It went as smooth as smooth can be for a scenario like that,” he said. “The way that everyone reacted is why he is still alive.”

Wood, who said about 100 athletes were doing the conditioning workout when Campbell collapsed, was equally impressed.

“There wasn’t any panic,” he said. “Coach (Jeff) Potter and my dad (LeRoy Wood) took care of the other kids while Lou, John and I helped Chris.”

Toledo Hospital reported Tuesday night that Campbell was in stable condition breathing on his own but in the intensive care in an induced coma.

Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies have carried AEDs in their cars for the past five or six years. Lestock was glad he had one Tuesday night.

“They’re expensive, but they are worth it if they save one person’s life,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, you get on that high with what you just accomplished in a situation like that. Then you have to step back and collect yourself and get that next call.”

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.”

The players panicked as they surrounded an unconscious Jonathan Moore on the football field outside Pearland’s Glenda Dawson High School on March 3.

Jonathan Moore the Survivor

A minute before, the 16-year-old had been running with his teammates prepping for football practice. But Jonathan, a husky fullback and defensive tackle, suddenly collapsed.

His heart had stopped beating. He had no pulse.

Team trainers Matt Thomas and Chris Shaddock hurried to Jonathan’s side and began CPR.

Thomas grabbed the school’s automatic external defibrillator and used it on Moore to restart his heart.

It started beating again and paramedics rushed the teen to Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston.

“I was sure he was dead,” Shaddock said.

Jonathan barely remembers anything from the day he collapsed. Someone told him he was doing a good job, but a few days later he found himself lying in a hospital bed, scared and confused.

Jonathan said, “Collapsed, passed out, actually died and Shadack and other trainers brought me back.”

“l’m very grateful for Pearland ISD, the trainers and all the doctors here,” said Jonathan’s mother Vanessa Williams.

Thomas and Shaddock said they weren’t really heroes. They were just doing what they were trained to.

“It was a team effort,” Shaddock said.

Cardiologists at Children’s Memorial Hermann implanted an internal defibrillator to regulate Jonathan’s heartbeat.

Student trainer Daniel Vermunt, men’s rugby coach Les Gilson and Mayla Parrent, associate director of Campus Security took action on November 13 when an 18-year-old varsity rower from Niagara Falls collapsed at the rowing center at the University.

Vermunt and Gilson were waiting for a bus when they heard someone shout, “Someone is down!”

Vermunt, who holds the Lifesaving Society’s Standard First Aid and Automatic Electronic Defibrillator certifications, found that the rower was not breathing.

Vermunt called to a bystander to get the defibrillator. Gilson arrived and with Vermunt, began two-person CPR and used the defibrillator.

Parrent, also a Society Standard First Aid certificate holder helped with compressions.

The three performed CPR for 10 to 15 minutes before the young man began breathing and EMS arrived.

Vermunt and Gilson only happened to be nearby because a bus was late in picking up the rugby team and taking them to an Ontario University Athletics bronze medal game, said Gilson.

“It was a whole bunch of little things that happened to fall into place,” he said.

Quick thinking and an external defibrillator helped save the life of a Gates-Chili Middle School student.

Michael Candileri & Julie Savage the Saviours

Years of training paid off for Gates-Chili coach Michael Candileri and athletic trainer Julie Savage. The defibrillator couldn’t have been in a better location, just steps from where the stricken girl fell.

Candileri said, “You know, you’re just calming yourself and keeping yourself under control, making sure you’re doing everything correctly. The only thought in your mind is to save this girl.”

Savage used the defibrillator to give eighth grader Olivia Fish the initial shock. “The AED analyzed her again and said continue CPR — all good signs that she didn’t need to be shocked again.”

“You know, for a split second, you thought about what you were doing and then I stopped thinking and I said I just have to do and I can’t think,” Candileri said.

Paramedics took over when they arrived but the coach said, that’s when he thought about what ultimately could have happened because when the outcome was still uncertain when the girl was taken to the hospital.

But everything went right that day. The shock Savage delivered and the CPR saved the girl’s life.

Both the coach and the athletic trainer have had a chance to see the girl and they said just seeing and talking with her — that’s been the most gratifying thing.

She is still in the hospital but is expected to go home soon. The school district said her family has expressed its gratitude for all that’s been done.

The coach of a Warminster youth basketball team suffered a heart attack in the last two minutes of a Warminster Basketball Association game at William Tennent High School Sunday afternoon.

Warminster Fire Chief Mitch Shapiro, whose son was playing in the game, and two parents who are nurses, rushed onto the court and used an automated external defibrillator to revive the coach, a man in his early 60s.

The fire chief said he has used the AED to revive people in the past, “but it is a lot different when you know the person.”

Shapiro said the coach was taken to Abington Memorial Hospital where he was undergoing tests Sunday night.

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.”

East Union High School attendance office employee Sue Bloodgood didn’t utter a word or make a sound on the morning of Nov. 19.

She just collapsed onto her desk.

The 52-year-old Bloodgood was working with campus monitor Julia Bylow, filing some paperwork to document a small scuffle between students on campus that morning, when she went lifeless and entered into cardiac arrest.

“I went over and said ‘Sue, Sue,’ but no response,” said Bylow, who, as chance would have it, had completed a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course just two weeks before – instruction that helped her save the life of her friend and colleague.

Bylow put Bloodgood in position and began CPR, delivering oxygen to her for four solid minutes, said Karl Knutsen, an East Union JROTC teacher.

After four minutes of CPR from Bylow, head football coach Mike James and Knudsen stepped in for an additional two before the paramedics team of Keith Danel and Jon Mendoza arrived to transport Bloodgood to a Kaiser Permanente facility before she was transferred to Doctors Hospital in Modesto.

“She was lifeless and she had no pulse,” Danel said. “They did an awesome job with the CPR.”

The very next day, Bloodgood was in good health, could take directions, apparently with little to no brain damage.

“I’m just so happy to be here,” Bloodgood said Tuesday night as she delivered hugs and thanks to the employees who were honored by Manteca Unified’s Board of Trustees for their heroic actions.

“Sue wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for them,” said Sue’s husband, Scott Bloodgood.

Drake Williams, 16, was doing offense-to-defense transition drills with the rest of the Wharton High basketball team Saturday when he pitched forward near mid court.

Drake Williams the Survivor

Drake tried to get up once, then collapsed in a heap.

By the time Wharton coach Tommy Tonelli got to the junior forward’s side, Drake’s eyes had rolled back and he wasn’t breathing.

Tonelli said he started chest compressions, tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and switched back to chest compressions. It wasn’t working, so he asked junior Jonathan Torres to take over the CPR while he went to get the gym’s automatic external defibrillator.

Meanwhile, a teammate used Tonelli’s cell phone to call 911 and to try to call Drake’s parents, Darrell and Monzita Williams of New Tampa. Others dashed out of the gym in search of another coach.

In the parking lot, they found Tampa Fire Rescue paramedic Ryan Bradford and firefighter-paramedic Angelo Santos Martinez. They had just come to Wharton High to pick up fire Capt. Rick Chesser, who had dropped off an equipment truck for Badge Bowl VIII, a charity flag football game that would pit Tampa firefighters against police later that day.

They walked in as Tonelli prepared to use the automatic defibrillator. Drake was pale, had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. His limbs were limp, and his pupils didn’t react.

Within a minute, however, the paramedics had shocked Drake’s heart back to life. On the way to the hospital, he talked to rescuers.

“He wanted to get back up and go play basketball,” firefighter-emergency medical technician Frank Coto Jr. said.

By Tuesday, Drake welcomed the rescuers who saved his life during a visit in the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit.

“I’m so happy to see that smiling face,” driver-engineer Mark Wengyn told Drake.

“I’m glad to be back,” Drake said. “Thank you for all that you did.”

The 14-year-old male student was in full cardiac arrest on the basketball court in the Blanche Ely High School gymnasium when someone called 911, said fire rescue spokeswoman Sandra King.

Joseph Saintelus the Survivor

“I was playing basketball with my friends and all of sudden, I didn’t see, I don’t see anything. I have like a blackout,” said Joseph Saintelus.

An assistant coach was performing CPR while the caller told a dispatcher what was happening at the school, 1201 NW Sixth Ave.

“Mr. Brown actually called 911, and he started with the chest compressions, and I started with the breaths and we were implementing the CPR and Joseph started to breath again,” said Nurse Sheila O’Neil-Brown

When paramedics arrived, they took over with a defibrillator and were able to start the boy’s heart again, said King.

He was conscious when he was taken to Broward General Medical Center.

“Clearly there were some tense moments on that basketball court,” she said, crediting the assistant coach and a school nurse who assisted with saving the boy’s life.

Joseph’s mother is grateful for everyone who jumped into action to save her son.

“If they wasn’t there, then I may not have my son today, and I thank God for them and them laying their hands and the extra strength to keep pushing, and to get him back with a heart beat,” said Corleitha Henley.