First Aid Corps

Kathy Margiasso, the fitness director at Mount Kisco Athletic Club, and another personal trainer were waiting for their 9 a.m. appointments last week when a member came running toward them.

View World Map on AED Locations in a larger map

“Someone fell off the treadmill,” Margiasso said was the urgent message.

Margiasso’s initial instinct was to grab the first aid kit, thinking it might be a case of scrapes and bruises, but then fellow trainer Val Yasovic told her the person was unconscious.

Kathy Margiasso the Saviour

Turns out a 64-year-old man had suffered a heart attack while working out on the treadmill. Margiasso said she quickly “turned back around,” and got the Automatic External Defibrillator, or AED, and told manager Tom Brady to call 911.

“Immediately what I did was just open the AED and put the pads on his chest, and the AED analyzed immediately and said there was a shock advised,” Margiasso said. “I did one shock and then we started CPR.”

Brady said Margiasso and Yasovic were in sync.

“She and Val worked as a team to save that guy’s life,” said Brady, noting that one trainer was operating the defibrillator and then together they did three cycles of CPR with Margiasso doing compressions and Yasovic the breaths.

Margiasso said the victim’s legs then started to move “and there were signs of life” so she stopped. By this point, police, EMTs and an ambulance had arrived at the 151 Kisco Ave. club

The club would not release the name of the member who was stricken but said he was stabilized at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco and then brought to the cardiac unit at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla where he underwent double bypass surgery the following day.

Margiasso said Tuesday she was proud of herself and the staff for remaining calm and grateful that everyone in the gym is trained to do CPR and use the AED. In fact, Margiasso is the one who trains them.

“I’m thrilled that when it comes time to put (to use) the skills that we practice over and over again, that we were able to do it,” she said.

A 74-year-old man was taken to hospital in critical condition after lifeguards rescued him from a pool and found he had suffered cardiac arrest.

View World Map on AED Locations in a larger map

Paramedic spokesman Supt. Darrell Drew said lifeguards at the Ottawa Athletic Centre on Lancaster Road initiated CPR and shocked the man with a defibrillator. Ottawa Fire Service assisted with CPR until paramedics arrived and put the man on advanced cardiac life support.

The man’s pulse had returned by the time he was transported to hospital, Drew said.

Thomas Thorburn sipped the last of his minestrone soup just before it happened.

As he sat at the kitchen table, a heart attack gripped his 70-year-old body. It was sudden and painless. Mr. Thorburn fell off his chair and stopped breathing.

“I dropped dead on my kitchen floor,” he said.

His frightened wife called 911, and within 3 minutes Police Chief Otto F. Rhode Jr. and Officer Duncan Baum were there. They performed CPR and used a defibrillator from a police cruiser to try to revive him.

“On the third shock, he took a breath,” Chief Rhode said.

The Rescue Squad soon arrived and took Mr. Thorburn to a hospital.

The next thing he remembers is waking up at UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus in Worcester, about three days after the May 14 heart attack.

“They brought me back,” Mr. Thorburn said of the Berlin emergency workers. “I’m one lucky guy.”

Mr. Thorburn, who has a history of heart problems, is also a former chief of the Rescue Squad.

He and his wife, Carol, say health problems are just a part of life that must be dealt with. But Mr. Thorburn is taking one preventive step: “I’m never eating soup again,” he said with a chuckle.

Charles Gordon slipped into unconsciousness after having the attack at the wheel of his car outside Aberdeen’s Union Square complex on February 16 this year.

View World Map on AED Locations in a larger map

The 76-year-old hit the car in front of him during the incident, which happened beside the centre’s New Look store.

Emergency services were called and police officers pulled Mr Gordon, of Highgate Gardens, Aberdeen, from the car.

Constable Gillian Esson then began giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, until passer-by Ewen Simpson, 42, of Macbeth Place, Lumphanan – an experienced first aider – carried out CPR.

Meanwhile, Richard Lornie, 31, of Devanha Terrace, Aberdeen, who was a passenger in the car which had been hit by Mr Gordon’s vehicle, rushed into nearby Cineworld to find a defibrillator to help save Mr Gordon.

Mr Lornie said he feared the worst after the paramedics arrived but was relieved when he heard Mr Gordon had survived.

“Luckily I was on a refresher course in using a defibrillator the day before, so when I saw Charles I knew what had happened,” he said.

“It is nice to be recognised, but what is more important is that Charles was OK afterwards – he was still in the ambulance when I left the scene and I was not sure he would pull through.

“I was glad to see so many other people wanting to come and help as well.”

Mr Lornie administered a shock before the crew took over.

Mr Gordon congratulated the people who came to his aid, and said: “Everyone since has told me it was a little miracle, and as far as I am concerned that is exactly what it was.

“All I can do is thank them profusely for what they did for me.”

At 10:10 a.m. Thursday, an 80-year-old Owego man and his wife were walking on the Rail Trail when the man experienced heart trouble and fell.

Sue Driver, an employee of Catalyst Manufacturing alongside the trail, saw the incident and immediately ran over.

She began CPR and was aided by town Parks Director James Bukowski, who also witnessed the incident from the Coal House, which the town is renovating.

Despite their efforts, the two were unable to revive the man, who wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.

Police officer William Serkiz arrived with a defibrillator and shocked the man.

The victim’s heartbeat resumed and he was able to breathe on his own.

“The machine was working very well,” Butler said.

After the incident, Serkiz talked on the phone with the man, who had been taken to Wilson Regional Medical Center in Johnson City.

Officer Nathan Fiske Sr. was in his cruiser when he heard a call on the scanner about an unresponsive 78-year-old woman in a medical office at 112 Main St.

Officer Nathan Fiske Sr the Saviour

Life-saving measures were being taken, the dispatcher reported.

Officer Fiske’s cruiser just happened to be 900 feet away. “I knew I didn’t have a second to waste,” he said.

When he arrived, the patient was not responding to chest compressions.

Officer Fiske immediately began using the defibrillator, which registers a patient’s heart rhythm. In this case, the machine’s automated verbal commands instructed the officer to shock the woman’s heart to restore a rhythm.

Once that was done, the chest compressions continued until the Fire Department arrived and took over.

By then, the woman was breathing and responding to stimuli. When the Fire Department finished working on her, she was conscious and talking.

She was in stable condition at University of Massachusetts Medical Center — University Campus by that night.

Don Weir, 66, suffered a heart attack on Feb. 15 after swimming at the Indiana University Natatorium on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis.

Weir, a father of seven and grandfather of four, had been working out in the pool for more than two decades before his life-changing ordeal, one he feels fortunate to have survived.

Feb. 15 was not a normal day for lifeguards. Although they undergo hours of training and practice to be ready to respond when someone in the water needs their help, they put those skills to the test in a real-world situation.

Five of them were involved in the rescue, not poolside, but in the locker room.

Weir had just finished swimming laps when he collapsed on the locker room floor. Another swimmer found him, and lifeguards rushed in to help.

CPR was performed on Weir, and an automatic defibrillator was used until paramedics arrived.

Weir was rushed to the hospital, where doctors were able to stabilize him.

On Monday, Weir was able to go back to the pool to thank those who saved him.

“I could hardly wait. I had no memory for five days,” he said. “They told me what happened. It was very important I get here.”

“Knowing that we kept a family together, it’s just unbelievable,” said lifeguard Christina Reitz. “You don’t think about that when you get up in the morning.”

Weir is still going through cardiac rehabilitation. He won’t be able to come back to swim until he gets clearance from a doctor, but Weir said he looks forward to returning to the pool.

The Allexander family, enjoying Spring Break, had just arrived at Marco’s South Beach on Tuesday afternoon when they heard a scream for help coming from the water.

An older woman had collapsed in the water and appeared to be lifeless, they said.

“That’s the first thing we ran into when we got there,” said Dave Allexander, 51, of Michigan.

Mary Bavaro, 74, of Smithtown, N.Y., laid motionless in the water as Allexander’s wife Dawn and their two daughters looked-on.

Allexander’s brother-in-law, Chris Jiminez pulled the Long Island woman out of the water and up to the beach.

Allexander, a former emergency medical technician in Michigan, ran to assist.

Meanwhile, Amy Mac, 40, of Virginia, was laying in the sand with her teen-aged children and their friend celebrating their Spring Break with a leisurely rest in the sun when she heard a scream for someone to call 9-1-1.

Mac, a Virginia Beach firefighter/paramedic, immediately assisted.

“She (Bavaro) was not breathing and didn’t have a pulse,” said Mac. “It was chaotic. Everyone wants to help. They were saying ‘Do this. Do this.’ I knew exactly what I was doing.”

The strangers, who are now called heroes for not hesitating to help, include Mac, Heidi Icon, of Fort Myers, and Allexander, of Saugatuck, a coastal community in southwest Michigan.

Allexander said Mac was the ultimate professional.

“You couldn’t find a better person to work with. I thought the world of how well Amy controlled the scene. That’s what it takes,” he said.

Allexander, despite saying his CPR skills are a bit outdated, said it’s the second time the training helped save a life off-duty. He still gets a call every year from a man he saved in a golf course pro shop about seven years ago.

The annual call gives him a great feeling, he said.

“I would like more people in the world to learn CPR so they can experience that,” Allexander said.

“It’s not a glory day for Amy or myself … but man, this CPR is crucial for people to learn and be able to initiate right away instead of having to wait for an officer to get there. That’s what saves lives,” he added.

Due to the difficulty of getting the chest compressions deep enough on an older person, Mac had to break some of Bavaro’s ribs to save her, Allexander said.

When Marco Island police officer Robert Sims arrived on the scene, he helped a growing crowd to disperse as police officer Tony Spina prepared an automated external defibrillator (AED), Sims reported.

Kimberly Richens, of Columbia, S.C., comforted and calmed Bavaro’s nearby family members, police said.

Mac said it was the first life she helped save while off-duty.

“I told some of my buddies at work what had happened. They were like ‘That’s what all of us would love to have the opportunity to do,’” said Mac. “I told them, it’s not fun when you don’t have all your equipment and you can’t give the person what you think they need.”

Marco Island Fire Rescue Department officials soon arrived and took over with additional equipment.

One boost from the AED and relief came for those working to save the Long Island woman’s life.

“She was trying to gasp for breath and I was like ‘awesome,’” Mac said.

Police brought Bavaro’s daughter, Maryann Haverline, 49, of the Long Island suburb Massapequa, N.Y., two grandchildren and Josephine Degaetano, 79, of Brooklyn N.Y., to Naples Community Hospital Downtown to remain by her side.

The near-death situation started with a family photo, Degaetano reported to police. She and Bavaro were standing in the surf and were turning around, when Degaetano said she looked and saw Bavaro facedown in about two feet of water.

Bavaro, who responders said suffered a severe heart attack prior to the near drowning, was in intensive care through Tuesday evening, and was in a special care unit in critical condition on Wednesday afternoon, hospital officials reported.

Allexander said he couldn’t say enough about the crucial help of the Virginia firefighter.

“I hate being put on a pedestal, but with training … she (Amy) made it easy for me. We worked really well together,” he said.

The two Spring Break strangers, Mac and Allexander, say they both await hearing how Bavaro is doing, but know they’d done all they could once she was breathing.

“At that point, it ended up the best it could have,” Mac said. “… My kids and I have said some prayers.”

On Wednesday, county firefighters received a call about a 75-year-old man who had gone into cardiac arrest at the fitness center of the Heritage Harbour Community Lodge just outside Annapolis.

He walked into the facility shortly after noon on Wednesday. He was standing near the fitness center talking with someone when his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, said general manager Byron “Barney” Calvert.

The building’s alarm was sounded and American Pool workers Bob Timmick, Brooks Wedeking and Tyrell Silver rushed to the victim.

Wedeking used the defibrillator and Silver helped him with the device and gave the man CPR.

Timmick helped get the patient on his back and later his side, when he began to breathe.

When firefighters arrived, he was alert with a red face and an elbow that was bleeding from his fall, Calvert said.

Firefighters then transported the man to Anne Arundel Medical Center in Parole.

“They saved his life,” said Division Chief Michael Cox, a county Fire Department spokesman. “The importance of AEDs in the public domain cannot be stressed enough. The chances of survival are greatly improved (when) automated external defibrillators are immediately available when someone collapses.”

Lt. Danielle Frye,a fire marshal for Loudoun County, was driving along Edwards Ferry Road near Woodberry Road when she noticed a vehicle driving erratically.

Moore, Kadric & Fyre the Saviours

When the vehicle stopped, Frye noticed the driver, Terry McCaffrey, of Leesburg, was slouched over the wheel unconscious.

Officer Mirza Kadric saw the stopped vehicle and thought it was a traffic accident, so he stopped.

When he realized that 7-year-old Leesburg man McCaffrey was unconscious, Kadric radioed dispatch for assistance and helped Frye pull him onto the road.

The two noticed McCaffrey wasn’t breathing and did not have a pulse, so they began CPR – Kadric giving chest compressions while Frye gave rescue breaths.

Leesburg Police Sgt. T.J. Moore heard the call from the police station and responded with an Automated External Defibrillator.

When Moore arrived, Frye thought about the snow on the ground and placed her coat under McCaffrey so he would be dry while they used the defibrillator on him.

Kadric and Frye placed the wires on McCaffrey’s chest, while Moore operated the machine.

The defibrillator took McCaffrey’s readings and advised that Moore administer a shock, so he did.

McCaffrey’s heart started beating just as an ambulance arrived to take him to Inova Loudoun Hospital.

He is expected to make a full recovery from his heart attack.

Frye, Kadric and Moore said that during the incident, what they had learned in training completely took over.

“It was almost like a thoughtless process,” Moore said.

Frye said that after McCaffrey’s heart started beating, she felt “a sense of awe that it worked.”

“It’s good to see that side of helping somebody,” Kadric said.

“It feels good to save somebody’s life, but it’s what we do,” Moore said, adding that he felt a sense of relief when he heard the ambulance arrive.