First Aid Corps

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.

77-year-old Robert Monson was behind the wheel of a car that went out of control, clipped another car, crossed into oncoming traffic and slammed into a guardrail on County Road J near Interstate 35E. He had pulled out of the White Bear Township 17 Theatre parking lot, tried to turn and suffered the heart attack about 9:10 p.m..

A handful of good Samaritans who pulled him out of his car, laid him on the street and performed CPR as they waited for an ambulance.

“Myself and the fire department, we’re doing the job we’re trained to do,” said Deputy Rob Wilkinson, the first police officer or rescue worker to arrive at the scene.

“Those good Samaritans didn’t have to stop and help, and they did. He owes his life to ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Robert Monson was lying on his back unconscious, eyes wide open but not breathing and without a heartbeat, when Wilkinson and his partner arrived at the scene.

“I knew it was a critical situation,” Wilkinson said

Two men were performing CPR. Wilkinson asked a third bystander to hold a flashlight and another to start setting up oxygen, and then the deputy used an automated external defibrillator shock to the man’s chest.

“The defibrillator analyzed his heart rhythm, advised a shock. It (defibrillator) prompted me to shock him so I pressed the button, shocked him and he suddenly began gasping for air and was restored to somewhat of a normal cardiac rhythm,” Wilkinson said.

Monson immediately gasped for air.

“You could hear the gasping, it was amazing,” Mason said.

An ambulance arrived, and he was loaded in and shocked a second time before being transported to United Hospital in St. Paul, where he remained in the intensive care unit Sunday night.

“They were so good, the response was wonderful,” said Barbara Monson, who said Sunday night she tried to perform CPR on her husband in the vehicle before having to run out and flag people down. “I just flagged them down. … We were lucky the movie was just letting out and another one was starting.”

Wilkinson said the good Samaritans were vital in extending the window of time for the driver’s survival.

“The credit really goes to them,” Wilkinson said. “What they did enabled me to do what I did to save him. It’s a textbook case of what should happen when someone has a cardiac emergency.”

“It’s great to know that people out there care,” Monson said.

“I feel very very lucky, we’ve been married for 55 years, we’ve had a very good marriage, best friends, get along great,” Monson said.

“I remember I had grilled us some burgers and had been whining to Tom about going swimming with me and the grandchildren at the Bricelyn pool,” says Shery Lamont, a nurse. “At first, he wasn’t going to go, but then he changed his mind.”

Tom Lamont (right) the Survivor

Sheryl says she told her three grandchildren to get their suits on while she finished doing the dishes. Then she got suited-up as well.

Meanwhile, waiting for everyone to get ready, Tom sat on the love seat.

“While I was in the kitchen, I heard gasping, snoring, loud respiration sounds similar to what our dog makes when it’s sleeping,” says Sheryl. “So I went to check things out and found Tom lying on the love seat.”

At first, when Tom didn’t respond to her, Sheryl says she thought he was just kidding her, trying to get out of the swimming trip. Then, looking at him more closely, she knew something more serious was happening to her husband.

“Tom was lying on the love seat,” she recalls. “His eyes were fixed. He was non-responsive and yellowish in color. I knew we were in trouble!”

“I started yelling at him,” recalls Sheryl, “don’t you leave me!”

She then called ‘911.’

“I told them to put a step on it,” she says. “I also told them I was going to start giving him CPR.”

It was at this point, she pulled her husband off the love seat to the floor and began CPR.

Still unresponsive, Tom turned a plum color as she was performing CPR on him. At this same time, the three grandchildren stepped into the room and saw her working on their grandfather.

Doug Besendorf and Heather Anderson, Frost Ambulance EMTs were the first on the scene and came running into the house.

“Before using the defibrillator, I wanted Sheryl to be totally off Tom and the couch away from them so no one would be zapped by the electrical shock,” recalls Heather.

Heather says she kicked the love seat aside, then ripped Tom’s shirt off before hooking the defibrillator to him.

Letting the machine talk and guide her through the process, Heather applied the paddles to Tom’s chest and shocked him once.

“Within the first five minutes,” says Sheryl, “Heather had Tom’s heart stopped and restarted by using the defibrillator. Then Randy (Benji) Anderson, another Frost Ambulance EMT continued the compressions on Tom.”

Tom was then back-boarded and loaded into the ambulance by the Frost EMTs.

He had a pulse when they left the house and was breathing on his own and moaning while en route to Blue Earth’s United Hospital District.

During his 10-day stay in Rochester, Tom underwent double by-pass surgery and had an ICD or internal cardiac defibrillator inserted into his chest.

Looking back on the day, Tom has no recollection of the incident, of his ambulance ride or of the air vac. All he remembers is sitting on the love seat in his home and the next thing he recalls is seeing his brother, David, and other family members at his hospital bedside.

“Just in seconds your life can change,” says a still disbelieving Sheryl of the day’s events. “From feeling helpless in a seemingly empty town, in just a few minutes my yard was full of people.”

“I’m just glad to be married to a nurse,” jokes Tom as he hears the story once again of his near-death experience.

Looking at her husband with a smile, Sheryl says, “you owe me a CPR.”

Pat Doherty and Trevor Tinney were attending an Ontario Hockey Association board meeting in Cambridge Nov. 18 – Doherty as a life member and Tinney as chair of the Central Junior C Hockey League – when Doherty, 81, suffered a heart attack.

Another OHA director, Rick Richardson, a fire chief, immediately began to administer CPR, 30 chest compressions at a time. Tinney assisted by breathing twice into Doherty’s lungs at Richardson’s signal.

“It seemed like forever,” Tinney said Monday, but he estimates the pair kept up their efforts for no more than seven minutes before emergency personnel arrived with a defibrillator and managed to get a pulse.

Doherty was rushed to Cambridge Memorial Hospital where he was given the last rites before being transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital in Kitchener.

“They figured we probably saved him,” Tinney said. “If we hadn’t done anything he probably wouldn’t have made it.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them,” Doherty said. “I don’t want to get kind of weepy about it. But that’s the truth.”

“Just to see his family and how appreciative they were [made for] a very emotional meeting,” Tinney said.

A 72-year-old man visiting Sheboygan collapsed in a motel lobby Tuesday night but was brought back to life by an automated external defibrillator, according to the Sheboygan Police Department.

Employees at AmericInn, 3664 Taylor Drive, called 911 about 6:45 p.m., and two Sheboygan police officers arrived to find the Coleman resident was not breathing and had no pulse, said Capt. James Veeser.

Officers Brian Inger and Ryan Schmitt performed CPR and then used the AED to revive the man.

He was taken to St. Nicholas Hospital and later transferred to Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital Ozaukee in Mequon.

Virgil Bramblett had just arrived at Hickman High School on Nov. 17 to help repair the school stage. For four hours that morning, the Columbia Public Schools carpenter had felt an uneasy pain in his chest. Muscles near his heart were sore, he thought.

Virgil Bramblett the Survivor

So he walked to the school nurse’s office — on the northeast side of Hickman — a five-minute walk from the school’s main office, where the automatic external defibrillator, or AED, rests.

At about 7:15 a.m. that day, the school’s licensed practical nurse, Cara Baker, had just arrived at work. She led Bramblett to a cot in the nurse’s office. Bramblett asked her to take his blood pressure because of chest pains.

After the blood-pressure reading, Bramblett popped up from the cot, ready to go to work. On his feet, though, he felt dizzy. Seconds later, he was on the cot again, unconscious. Evans and Baker moved him to the floor and began CPR, and Evans shouted at Lisa Chalupny, the office secretary, to call 911.

Do you need the AED?” Chalupny asked, referring to the defibrillator.

“Yes!” Evans replied.

Assistant Principal Tracey Conrad was standing near a stairway in the Hickman Commons when she heard home-school communicator Talisha Payne’s voice on the walkie-talkie asking for the AED.

Conrad sprinted toward the box on the wall containing the defibrillator. School office worker Theodore Hanfelder already had the machine and handed it to Conrad, who dashed to the nurses’ office.

When Conrad reached the office, Evans grabbed the AED as Baker continued CPR.

The AED showed Bramblett’s heartbeat was irregular and that he was having his fifth heart attack. The machine advised Evans to send an electrical shock into him. She pushed the button.

After the AED shock in the nurse’s office, Bramblett seemed to stabilize. The nurses said he even spoke to them.

“I’m so sorry,” he told them. “Thank you so much.”

Evans told him emergency crews were coming. “Oh, I gotta get back to work,” the nurses said he told them.

Bramblett was released from the hospital Nov. 19 and advised to not work for at least a month.

Brenda Bramblett remains anxious about her husband’s health. “It’s just really scary when he leaves the house every day,” she said.

Brett Flanagan and Kendra Hicok, a restaurant manager and server at The Grill at Quail Creek, were honored at a Green Valley Fire District board meeting for saving the life of a World War II veteran who had a heart attack in the restaurant in October.

Flanagan says his co-worker, who was first on the scene, assessed the situation and determined that the man’s heart had stopped.

They used an Automated External Defibrillator (AED), which administers an electric shock, to revive the victim, who is now recovering.

GVFD’s administrative chief Katie Sayre said many businesses and churches in Green Valley are equipped with AEDs.

In late August, Lawless and some of his family members decided to take his birthday gift — a new boat — to Bowen’s Creek, near Philpott Lake. First, they stopped at a nearby store for fuel.

Allen Lawless the Survivor

He continued to participate in the family outing, boating for a couple hours while eating pizza and other snacks, before heading back to the boat ramp with his wife, Barbara Lawless; daughter; son-in-law; and grandchildren.

Confronted with mechanical problems, Lawless’ son-in-law asked him to get some tools from Lawless’ truck. There, he got pliers, an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver from the tool box.

“I got about halfway back down to the boat” when he fell face-first onto the ground, said Lawless, of Ridgeway.

“My son-in-law tried to resuscitate me,” he said, but those efforts were futile as the family started asking for help.

Two park rangers, Curtis Brooks and Jordan Moore, were among the first to respond, according to Craig “Rocky” Rockwell, operations manager at Philpott Lake.

They found Lawless shaking “as if having a seizure. He had no pulse and was not breathing,” Rockwell said.

Brooks called to Semones, who radioed 911 for help. Then Brooks and Schlueter “started administering life-sustaining CPR” while Moore made sure Lawless’ head was positioned correctly, Rockwell said.

“It was 15 minutes before Bassett Rescue Squad got to me,” Lawless said.

Lawless said he was told he had “turned completely black in the face and had no heartbeat” when the rescue squad arrived.

A defibrillator was used to “shock me,” Lawless said. “They got me on the gurney and were ready to leave the parking lot when I stopped breathing again,” Lawless said he was told.

The defibrillator was used two more times before he was airlifted from Memorial Hospital in Martinsville to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Lawless said he has been told.

“It’s just by the grace of God that I’m here to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving,” Lawless said. “I thank God, my wife and sisters” and all who continued praying “I’d pull through. They never gave up on me.”

The retired longshoreman, 85-year-old Bill Trujillo, strapped on his helmet and set out on a route he’d traveled many times.

John Heinrich the Saviour with Bill Trujillo the Survivor

There, his memory of that day stops. It picks up 20 days later, when he regained consciousness in a hospital and was told he’d suffered a heart attack, fallen off his bicycle and ultimately underwent six-way bypass surgery.

On Aug. 24, Heinrich was off-duty and traveling with his wife to Wal-Mart to buy supplies for the high school class he helps teach.

They were at the intersection of Elm Street and Mills Avenue when they saw Trujillo lying in the street, tangled in a bicycle about a block south.

They detoured and drove to the man, where Heinrich jumped out of the vehicle.

A bystander was about to move Trujillo out of the roadway, but the firefighter said to wait, in case the man had spinal injuries.

“I checked for a pulse, and he didn’t have one,” Heinrich said.

It all happened very quickly, Heinrich said, but instinct and training kicked in instantly.

He started CPR while using his cell phone to call for help. Fellow on-duty firefighters arrived with a defibrillator and used it twice before Trujillo’s heart started beating again.

“Really, all I did was keep him alive until they got here with the defibrillator,” Heinrich said.

An ambulance soon arrived and took Trujillo to Lodi Memorial Hospital. He was then transferred to Mercy Hospital in Sacramento.

Mike Trujillo noted that Heinrich’s training saved his father’s life, allowing the family to celebrate Thanksgiving today.

“He acted not only as a fireman but as a citizen,” he said. “We should probably all learn CPR.”

Half an hour into a tennis set Tuesday morning, Nov. 3, Ray Schami,72 , began to lean over, bracing his hands on his thighs, then fell to the ground.

Ray Schami (center) the Survivor

“He was gasping,” said Ron Kydd, 67. “And [his breathing] wasn’t regular. It was sort of one big gasp and then something and then nothing. Nothing.”

John Stevenson, 72, dashed for his phone and called 9-1-1, and he and Kydd rolled Schami onto his back and started doing CPR, trading off between them.

Kydd said that he’d done his training a few years ago and was able to remember the counting for the breaths and chest compressions. And Stevenson says that as a fitness instructor and personal trainer, he has done CPR training pretty regularly over the last decade or so.

“After a few minutes, when it was obvious that Ray’s pulse was weak if it was present at all — it was so hard to tell, because we’re panicking — I went out to the car while John continued the CPR, and I got the defibrillator that my wife and I carry in the car,” Kydd said. “We carry it because we live in Roberts Creek and it’s 15 minutes from an ambulance, if you’re lucky.”

“The first thing it says is, ‘Be calm.’ Well, no chance of that,” Kydd said wryly. “And then it tells you to check the airways and the various steps you’re supposed to do, including attaching the pads to the person’s chest, which I did. And then it analyzes. It says, ‘Analyzing, analyzing.’ And then it said, ‘Shock recommended,’ and ‘Stand back.’ And so at that time I pushed the button and gave the shock.”

Kydd administered two separate shocks, between rounds of CPR, and then paramedics and firefighters arrived and continued working on Schami.

Paramedics took Schami to St. Mary’s Hospital until he could be transferred by helicopter to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, where he was put in a medically-induced coma for 24 hours. He had a defibrillator implanted and was released from hospital Saturday, Nov. 14.

Now, he says, he’s still feeling weak, but is counting his blessings that his heart attack happened in the right place, near the right people.

“I live alone so I could have been alone and had this heart attack and have been found a week or so later by neighbours,” he said. “[My children] would have been concerned [when they hadn’t heard from me as usual] and my neighbours would have walked in to find me dead.”