Family of Leanne Jackson

Leanne Jackson collapsed two weeks ago in Scoresby while she was walking the dog with her husband, Victoria Police Inspector and Foundation Training manager Glenn Jackson.

Her heart began quivering, preventing blood from pumping to her body and brain.

“It was like the worst feeling in my life, times 100,” Inspector Jackson told the Herald Sun.

Keeping their dog’s leash secured in one hand, he used his other hand to brace her fall.

A cyclist who pulled over to help then held their dog and called an ambulance.

Another couple stopped and helped with CPR, taking instructions from an emergency operator.

“Nothing was working, she was blue,” Mrs Jackson’s sister-in-law Sue Ulbrick said.

Ambulance Victoria Advanced life support paramedic Patrick Donaldson said Mrs Jackson was clinically dead when they arrived.

“We shocked her four times before her heart started beating again,” Mr Donaldson said.

“We had no idea if she was going to pull through or not,” Mrs Ulbrick said.

Last Friday she was taken out of an induced coma.

“Not only was she alive, but she was walking and talking,” she said.

“By Tuesday she was on Facebook.”

MonashHeart director Professor Ian Meredith said ventricular fibrillation was caused by a chaotic electrical rhythm.

“The CPR actually kept her alive by keeping blood flowing to her brain,” he said.

She now has an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator which acts as a pacemaker and defibrillator.

“Without the help of those people who came to her aid, she wouldn’t be here,” Insp Jackson said.

Insp Jackson is desperate to find those who helped save his wife’s life so he returned to Ferntree Gully Rd and held up a sign saying: “Thank you. She lived.”

Coyne, 49, was playing an 8:45 p.m. match at Kemp Field in Folsom.

He’d just been subbed back in after a breather and the ball was down at the other end of the long field.

“As I ran onto the field, I said, ‘I don’t feel too well,’ and that’s all I remember.

As in: That’s all he remembers between Oct. 27, when he collapsed, and Wednesday, when his head began to clear after surgery to implant a heart defibrillator.

“Today I feel great,” Coyne said Thursday. “According to my wife, yesterday and the day before I was pretty incoherent.”

That he’s alive at all is thanks to the fact that two of his Turn Verein soccer teammates – unbeknown to Coyne – were an emergency medical technician and a Mercy General Hospital cardiac rehab program director.

“None of them (his cardiac patients) ever collapsed on me in the middle of exercise,” said Ken Rogaski, the rehab coordinator, who did chest compressions to keep Coyne’s heart going until Folsom Fire Department paramedics arrived.

“I’m so glad he said something,” said Rogaski. “Everyone was looking in the exact opposite direction.”

Rogaski’s quick actions make Coyne a rarity, a person who had a heart attack outside the hospital and survived.

“Their chances of surviving are less than 5 percent,” said Bryan Gardner, a spokesman for Mercy Hospitals.

Rogaski and another team member heard Coyne breathing, but found his pulse was irregular and weak.

Rogaski, trained in an advanced version of CPR, started the compressions.

Coyne was taken to Mercy Folsom where he was stabilized and his body cooled – a method used in recent years to give the body’s organs a better chance of surviving after severe cardiac problems.

Then he was transferred to Mercy General in Sacramento for surgery to install a cardioverter-defibrillator.

His family lives in Placerville, but his wife, Marjorie, and 18-year-old daughter Paris had to rush back from Mexico City, where Paris had a modeling job. He also has a son, John, 16.

Coyne thought he was in good shape, playing soccer three or four times a week.

His wife reminded him, “You have a history of passing out.” He would get light-headed getting up from bed.

“Not always,” Coyne said, knowing he should’ve had it checked out before.

His teammates learned something from the incident, too. The day after the attack, Rogaski ran into another teammate at a youth soccer game.

“He had already enrolled in CPR training,” Rogaski said.

“They just need to know how to do that,” Gardner said.

“Actually, I’m going to have to take a CPR class,” Coyne said.

He hopes to be back at work in a week or so. “I’m a graphic designer. It doesn’t take much to sit down and open a computer.” His online profile at his firm describes him as a “soccer fiend.”

He feels blessed to be doing anything.

“I wouldn’t be here if Ken wasn’t on our team,” he said. “I’d be dead.”

Dr Art Meeker the Survivor

Carr was applying Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) within a minute of Meeker falling to the ground, a process he maintained until the ambulance arrived.

He was rushed to the Royal Hobart Hospital with paramedics needing to apply defibrillator paddles twice in an endeavour to keep Meeker alive.

Mixed messages emerged with many industry participants convinced he had passed away but Meeker had other ideas.

He was placed in an induced coma for about 24 hours and late on Friday afternoon he was awake and talking to his wife Shirley and family members who had gathered at his bedside fearing the worst.

“I remember going to Royston’s stables but I have no recollection of what happened from then to when I woke up yesterday,” Meeker said yesterday from his ICU bed.

“I believe I owe my life to Royston so I’m looking forward to thanking him when I get back to his stables, which will hopefully be in the very near future,” he said.

Meeker expects to remain in hospital for at least a few more days.

“They will do an angiogram tomorrow (Sunday) to try and detect what may have caused the heart attack and then we’ll take things from there.”

“To be honest I feel really good and if it wasn’t for people telling me that I was in a very bad way I’d be pushing to get out of this place and go back to work.”

“I believe some people wrote me off but I’m still here and I mean to stay around for quite a bit longer,” he said.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

“Sara has exemplified extraordinary composure during a very stressful situation and we are very proud of her unyielding compassion to help others,” said Wayne Lohmoeller, Operations Manager for the Cincinnati Zoo. “These are just a few of Sara’s leadership traits; we can all learn from her examples.”

Sara Benjamin the Saviour & Terry Huffman the Survivor

Terry Huffman wasn’t feeling very good, but he didn’t want to renege on a promise to accompany his 9-year-old nephew on an overnight field trip to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.

Before heading to the park that day – May 17 – the 55-year-old East End resident stopped at his workplace, Tostado’s Grill, to pick up a paycheck.

“Sit down,” his boss told him. “You don’t look good.”

“I’m fine,” Huffman said.

He remembers nothing about that night – or the next morning – at the zoo. After breakfast, about 8:30, chaperones and elementary students from Cincinnati Christian Schools were gathered in Frisch’s Theater in the zoo’s Harold C. Schott Education Center, awaiting a bird show.

That’s when Huffman suffered a massive heart attack, the kind so few survive that doctors call it a “widow maker.”

His heart stopped pumping. Without oxygen, his brain would begin to die within five minutes.

Sara, the zoo’s 25-year-old security operations supervisor, was in her office at the main entrance when the call came that someone had collapsed.

As she jumped on the first-aid golf cart, she reminded herself: Make sure you have the AED (automated external defibrillator) ready. Make sure you don’t leave it on the cart.

She arrived at the theater in less than a minute. Children were quickly being ushered out, but chaperones remained.

“It was scary,” Benjamin said. “He was lying on his back on the floor. One of the chaperones was supporting his head. His eyes were open. There was no response from him at all.”

Huffman’s face was pale. His lips had a bluish tint.

“It was all instinct,” Benjamin said. “My Red Cross training just kicked in.”

She checked that he wasn’t breathing, then began CPR – rescue breathing and chest compressions.

She asked if anyone else knew CPR. A chaperone – she didn’t catch his name – said he could help. Benjamin asked him to continue the compressions while she readied the defibrillator.

She positioned its pads on Huffman’s body. The machine analyzed his heart rhythm and indicated that he needed an electrical shock.

The shock caused his body to jump an inch off the floor.

The machine told Benjamin to continue CPR. She did until Cincinnati Fire personnel arrived and were ready with their own defibrillator. Then they shocked Huffman again.

By then, he was trying to talk.

“That was just pure relief,” Benjamin said.

She remained calm until she returned to her office, where she began to shake. It lasted the rest of the day.

Huffman said he has been lucky in life to be surrounded by many friends and family members. But he’s alive today because of the efforts of total strangers in the minutes and hours after his heart attack.

“Basically he had died,” Khan said. “Bystander CPR was the best thing that could have happened to him.”

Benjamin wasn’t exactly a bystander. Certainly she’s no longer a stranger.

“She’s the nicest person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Huffman said.

His family contacted her at the zoo, which led to an emotional meeting while Huffman was still in the hospital. The family presented her with a plaque.

She, in turn, gave Huffman a plant, a type of tropical water lily known as lucky bamboo.

“It’s something that will grow. Something you can take care of, and it’ll stick around for a while,” she said.

Just like her new friend.

James Brown and Dan Piper the Saviours

Two police officers, PC James Brown and PCSO Dan Piper, were alerted to the woman, who had also stopped breathing, and began resuscitating her until London Ambulance staff took over.

Doctors and paramedics say the officers actions saved the woman’s life.

The woman is believed to have suffered a heart attack and is now recovering in hospital.

PC Brown, 37, a children’s entertainer before joining the Met 10 years ago, said: “In these situations the adrenaline just kicks in and you know that whatever you do next can make a huge difference to someone and their family. The training just kicks in.

“We were relieved when we felt a slight pulse after the CPR and we both knew we had done our best.”

He added: “This incident just makes the job worth it. If I retire in 20 years and I have done nothing else, I will always remember the day I tried my level best to give someone a chance to live.”

Former builder PCSO Piper said: “I cannot describe it how it feels when someone thanks you for saving them and when you feel you have made a difference for an entire family.”

The officers are both part of the Greenwich Transport Hub Team.

Greenwich’s borough commander Chief Superintendent Richard Wood said: “This is the Met at its finest. I am very proud. We wish the woman in question and her family all the very best for the future.”

Jose Reyes the Saviour

“I’m not a hero,” Supreme Court Officer and certified EMT Jose Reyes told the Daily News shortly after the rescue yesterday afternoon. “I’m still shaking.”

Little Emely Carrasco’s father disagreed.

“I don’t think words can describe how thankful I am,” said Edwin Carrasco.

“You’re talking about a guy who brought my daughter back to life. I don’t know how to thank him. I didn’t know we still had people like that out here.”

Reyes, 44, was helping a co-worker with a sprained ankle into an ambulance on Walton Ave. when an SUV screeched to a halt.

“Please help me! My baby’s not breathing!” Edwin Carrasco was yelling.

“I opened the door and there was a young lady crying and yelling and holding a baby,” said Reyes, a father of three.

“The baby had had a seizure and stopped breathing, so I grabbed the baby and ran to the ambulance that was already there,” said Reyes.

“It was instinct that just kicked in.”

The “really cute little girl,” who turns 2 on June 24, was limp and blue, said Reyes. He put her in the ambulance and began to perform CPR.

“I was so scared,” he said. “I was really nervous. I just wanted to make the baby start breathing again.

“I went to put my face to her nose to see if she was breathing and she started to move, so I knew she was coming to. She started to throw up, and I felt a lot better.”

A second ambulance whisked Emely to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital’s emergency room, where Reyes visited her after finishing his shift.

A sore throat gave her a high fever that led to the seizure, a doctor told her father.

“When she started breathing again, I came back to life, too,” said Edwin Carrasco, 25. “The doctor said she’ll be better soon.”

Julianna Marquez the Saviour with Quamir Cooper the Survivor

Julianna, a third-grader with wavy brown hair, was nearby in the water. She swam beneath the surface and pulled 4-year-old Quamir Cooper to the pool’s edge.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Julianna said Tuesday. “I was just like, ‘OK, I’m just going to grab him.’ ”

Julianna’s heroism was recognized in a poolside ceremony Tuesday after Roanoke County officials said she helped save Quamir from drowning at the pool of the Villages at Garst Creek in Roanoke County.

The police officers, paramedics and good Samaritans who helped gathered for the ceremony, where they recounted the drama that unfolded June 1.

Sheena Rosser, Quamir’s mother, was arriving at the apartment complex pool with Quamir and her daughter, Alaejah. The pool isn’t staffed by a lifeguard, and as she ran back to her car to grab pool towels, Rosser lost sight of the young boy.

Quamir floated briefly before sinking to the bottom of the pool’s 5-foot deep end.

Nearby, Julianna noticed Quamir hadn’t resurfaced.

Without hesitation, Julianna said, she swam to the bottom of the pool. She opened her eyes underwater and could see that Quamir wasn’t moving.

Julianna grabbed hold of Quamir’s tiny frame and lifted him to the surface. By then, adults took note of the struggle and helped lift the boy onto the concrete pool deck. His body was limp and showed no signs of life.

Timothy Tilley, sitting nearby with his children, rushed over.

“There was a panic, and I come over to see what was going on,” said Tilley, 30. “We realized the boy wasn’t breathing, so I felt like, you know, we was wasting time.”

Inside the apartment management office, Roanoke County police Officer Bobby Zizelman, 30, was wrapping up an unrelated call to settle a disturbance that had brought him and other officers to the complex.

“I heard a bunch of screams coming from the pool area,” Zizelman said. He ran outside and saw a group of people standing around Quamir.

As Zizelman radioed for an ambulance, Officer Darin Hogan, 42, ran from his car in the parking lot. He approached the unconscious Quamir and couldn’t find a pulse.

The boy was dying.

Sgt. Jay Matze, a 14-year Roanoke County police veteran, was leaving the complex from the disturbance call and heard Zizelman’s urgent radio call for help. He quickly turned around.

“By the time I got to the pool, I saw Quamir laying here on the deck,” Matze said. Tilley “was already at his head. I just came around and between the two of us, we started doing CPR.”

For three minutes, Tilley and Matze, 47, worked together to save Quamir’s life: Tilley issuing breaths through Quamir’s mouth, and Matze performing compressions on the boy’s torso.

“The thought never crossed my mind that he wasn’t going to come out of it,” Matze said.

Quamir tried to breathe, but started choking. Matze and other officers gripped him in the Heimlich maneuver and cleared his airway.

Life soon returned to the boy’s body and he began coughing up water. By the time a Roanoke County Fire and Rescue Department crew arrived a few minutes later, Quamir was crying and asking for his mother.

Quamir was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he stayed for two days. Tuesday was the first time Quamir and his mother had seen the rescuers since the event.

Following the ceremony, Julianna hugged Quamir and asked if he was OK. The shy boy turned away from her — and the television and newspaper cameras — but offered up a smile across his mother’s arms.

“I owe my life to her,” Rosser said of the 9-year-old rescuer. “I would do anything for her. If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be here.”

Wednesday’s ceremony at the pool was attended by Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder, among other officials.

The officers who responded presented Julianna and Tilley with awards for their actions.

“In a day and age when nobody wants to help each other, this little girl and this guy … just hopped down there and no questions asked started giving CPR,” Zizelman said.

Matze, who said he has young children of his own, hugged Quamir and presented him with an honorary SWAT challenge coin, a police token that signifies participation in the elite group.

“When you grow up, you gotta do something nice for someone, OK?” Matze told him. “And when you grow up and you see me some day, you come find me, and you shake my hand.”

“What she said was so chilling,” Connie said. “She said her baby fell in the pool and she’s not breathing.”

Connie and her husband ran into the house past nine other children. She recalled the “look of horror” on the faces of everyone as she was handed the lifeless child by one of the home’s residents.

“It didn’t feel like she was alive,” Connie said. “There was no pulse and she was a steel blue and getting darker. She was soaking wet.”

Connie started rescue breaths, but it didn’t take long for Kevin to realize they were not working.

He started doing back blows and water started spewing out of the girl’s mouth, but she still was not responding.

As everyone around them was in a panic, Connie said she was hoping she was doing all the right things to save the girl’s life.

Kevin put his hands around Madison’s rib cage and Connie cleaned her nose and mouth to clear her airway. He began doing compressions.

“I could hear everyone in the background just screaming and praying,” Connie said. “I’ll never forget the feeling of her in my arms. Then, her mother leaned over and said, ‘Madison, you come back right now.’”

After about 90 seconds of compressions, Madison let out “a thrust of cries.”

“At that moment, for the first time, I thought we were winning,” Connie said. “I thought we had snatched her (from death). But, she went right back to having no response.”

Connie told Madison’s mother to keep touching her, that the little girl knew she was there.

Connie said that when police officers arrived, they immediately recognized the gravity of the situation.

Connie and Kevin said all they had to work with was the family’s kitchen table, and Madison needed a whole lot more than that. She said emergency personnel “scooped her up and ran.”

Once Madison was taken away, the couple found themselves standing in a stranger’s kitchen having just dealt with the enormity of a life-and-death situation.

“All I knew was that the little girl’s name is Madison,” Connie said. “Kevin and I both cried pretty hard in the front yard. We didn’t have the feeling that she was going to live. We just walked back home and didn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Connie and Kevin had such an emotional investment in the girl that they couldn’t stand not knowing the status of her condition.

The couple called a friend in the nursing field for help and received an email at about midnight that there was no word on Madison’s condition.

However, they were able to get their telephone number passed along to Madison’s parents.

Connie and Kevin eventually got what they were hoping for — a message from Madison’s father.

“He called me and left a beautiful message,” Connie said.

Madison has since been released from a hospital and has made a full recovery.

About a week after her release, Connie and Kevin had a private reunion under much happier circumstances with Madison and her parents.

The reunion was emotional for everyone.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” Connie said. “Now she gets to go to kindergarten and do other things.”

They believe that Madison has “awesome, loving parents” and simply called the circumstances an accident. Nevertheless, they view this “traumatic experience” as a teachable moment for other parents.

Connie said it is important for all parents to know CPR, especially if there is a pool and children are around.

Connie and Kevin have been married for 27 years and have four children. They also have a 2-year-old grandson.

The two credit each other for being the “hero.”

That day — May 22 — will forever be significant in their lives and they couldn’t be happier that their neighborhood walk took a turn that helped save a life.

Meghan Pituch, 26, a graphic artist and analyst who’s worked at the Montreal-based IT company for four years, jumped out of her seat and ran toward the commotion. She found her colleague, 62-year-old Bruce Strissel, slumped over in his chair. Some coworkers froze in fear while others ran to dial 911 or fled in search of help.

Pituch got moving, too – toward Strissel. She and Donna Jordan, a colleague who works for BAE Systems, performed CPR on the government worker while another colleague Barbara Gault, who is certified in CPR, supervised them until the paramedics arrived. Because of their quick thinking and swift action, Strissel is alive and well today.

To recognize their efforts, the American Heart Association (AHA); the DC City Council; and DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services honored the three women as Heartsaver Heroes at a ceremony at the City Council steps on June 2. Part of National CPR Week, they each received a framed award certificate and a letter of recognition from DC Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.

“Even though Meghan was not certified in CPR at the time, she, Barbara and Donna demonstrated that being active responders saves lives,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI and a member of AHA’s Mid-Atlantic Affiliate Board of Directors. “This shows you simply cannot be a passive bystander in times of an emergency medical crisis.”

Eric Lemieux the Survivor

Eric Lemieux was working on a tractor with his son-in-law when he had a heart attack. In a matter of seconds, his step-daughter and son-in-law started performing CPR.

“I noticed his lips were turning blue, and his face was kind of turning blue. So I started doing chest compressions right away. And then I noticed the second I started doing that, I noticed the colour started coming back into his lips,” Stephanie Dionne told CTV Ottawa on Monday.

Dionne learned CPR because of a mandatory program through work. She never thought she’d actually have to use it.

“Without the training, we wouldn’t have known what to do. All we would’ve done is call 911. And even though they were very quick to respond, I don’t know if it would’ve been soon enough,” Dionne said.