First Aid Corps

Dr. Craig Levine, an oral surgeon from Merrick, was at a bar mitzvah at the Seawane Country Club in Hewlett last Saturday when he saw his friend Lew Goldman, the host of the event, passed out on the dance floor.

With the help of an automated external defibrillator, Levine revived Goldman.

“I immediately knew that he was in cardiac arrest, and I yelled out for someone to get an AED,” said Levine, who has campaigned to make defibrillators more readily available. “I unfortunately have been through experiences like this.”

In 2005, Levine’s son Robbie, 9, died on a Little League ballfield in Merrick. A policeman responding to the scene brought an AED, but it was too late.

In Levine’s Bay Shore office in April 2007, he saw a patient waiting for a dental consultation collapse from a heart attack.

Levine brought out an AED and saved her life.

“All these things that happen make me think of my son,” Levine said. “I couldn’t save my son, but I saved the lives of two people and spared their families.”

Goldman collapsed during his twin sons’ bar mitzvah.

“I don’t know what to make of it, why this keeps happening,” Levine said Friday, shaking his head ruefully.

“The real story is the AED saved my life,” Goldman said Friday from his Merrick home, where he was recovering. “Craig Levine is a hero.”

“The fact that Craig was there and they had an AED at the Seawane Country Club, and that it happened that night, I’m one lucky man,” Goldman said.

Tags: Country Club, CPR+AED, Dentist, Events, Friend, Life Saved

On Sept. 18, as 71-year-old George Allison was in the back seat of his son Craig Allison’s car driving on Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo, Calif., he suffered sudden cardiac arrest.

“We had just finished some conversation and there was some quiet time. Within about 30 seconds my son turned around,” said Barbara, who was riding in the front seat.

From the look on Craig’s face, she said, she knew something terrible was happening.

Her husband of nearly 50 years wasn’t breathing.

Craig pulled the car to the shoulder and yanked his father’s body from the back seat and tried to administer the Heimlich maneuver, thinking his father had choked on a peanut.

“My daughter-in-law got out and she was screaming for help. Her cell phone wouldn’t work,” said Barbara. “Craig pulled him out of the car and laid him on the ground, and the people showed up.”

Those people were strangers Daniel Lapidus, a San Luis Obispo dentist who had recently finished his active duty with the Air Force, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and Marisela Campos, a public health employee working toward a degree in nursing.

“He wasn’t breathing, and he didn’t have a pulse,” Lapidus told the Tribune. “I knew we had to give him CPR.”

Lapidus started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and Campos began chest compressions.

Barbara Allison said the two strangers worked for eight minutes to try to get her husband to breathe again.

A California Highway Patrol trooper arrived on scene and hit George with a defibrillator, which sends an electric shock to the heart.

George was rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to implant a defibrillator in his chest.

By Monday, he and his wife were home.

“The most memorable part of this is the people and how they reacted — the lady, the dentist and the highway patrolman — the things they did. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t ask,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “All of those things needed to come together just right, and they did.”

“Eight minutes of CPR is a very long time and almost never happens,” said Barbara. “There are very few who could have lived under these circumstances.”

“They were my guardian angels,” said George.

Tags: Cop, CPR+AED, Dentist, Events, Life Saved, Nurse, Street, Vehicle

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

Rick Rockwood was back having fun playing noon basketball at the Boys and Girls Club of Duluth on Friday on the same court where he died six months ago.

Duluth firefighters, trained as emergency medical technicians, were there Friday, too, but only for photographs this time. The last time they responded to the gym to see Rockwood they brought him back to life.

Rockwood, 57, had a heart attack during noon basketball on Nov. 28.

He had played in one game and was getting ready to start another. “All of a sudden I grabbed my face and said, ‘Uh-oh guys, I need help.’ They said I was gone before I hit the floor. It’s the widow-maker [an occluded artery] that got me. It was a fatal heart attack, meaning I had died. I had gone.’’

George Balach, a Duluth dentist who was there to play basketball, started performing CPR as someone else called 911.

Duluth Fire Station No. 2 is only 1½ blocks away, and firefighters were there in less than a minute, said Capt. Joel Heikes of the Fire Department. Heikes, fire equipment operator Brad Bushey and firefighter Alex Owen arrived with an external heart defibrillator, used to shock the heart to make it beat after it has stopped.

“I had an out-of-body experience,’’ Rockwood said. “I was standing and all the guys were around me and I guess they were praying. I was watching the EMTs get the defibrillator out. They cut my jersey off.’’

In reality, the firefighters found Rockwood on his back with Balach performing CPR. “That’s a key to a successful story — quick CPR and quick defibrillation,’’ Heikes said. “We continued CPR while I was getting out the defibrillator. We confirmed that he had no pulse. We analyzed it and it advised us to shock him, and after the first shock we got a pulse back. We put an airway in. That was great. It doesn’t happen all the time like that, but that was great.’’

The father of three adult sons said he had no history of heart problems or any health-related issue. He was adopted, and for that reason he scheduled regular physicals because he had no family medical history.

“I had no burn marks and no brain damage, although that’s debatable according to the guys I play basketball with,’’ he said of being zapped by the defibrillator.

“My biggest point is that George and those firefighters saved my life. If they wouldn’t have been there and the firefighters wouldn’t have had the quality training that they did, I would be dead — period.

Tags: Basketball, CPR+AED, Dentist, Events, Firefighter, Life Saved, Sports, Sports Centre