First Aid Corps

Dan Caplis, Denver lawyer best known as a conservative talk-show host and Ches Thompson, a 48-year-old ob/gyn, hadn’t actually met while they and about five other dads were playing football with their kids on the sunny Thanksgiving afternoon.

Thompson suddenly lurched forward and fell on his face.

Dr. Scott Bainbridge, a spine specialist also playing in the game, rolled Thompson onto his back, checked his signs and started CPR in the muddy field.

Dan Caplis the Saviour

Caplis, meantime, bolted to his SUV. By the time he returned with his defibrillator, Thompson was flatlining.

“Stay calm. Follow these voice instructions. Make sure 911 is called now. Begin by exposing patient’s bare chest and torso,” began the recorded voice in the machine.

Caplis followed the cues, placed the pads on Thompson’s chest and stood back as the AED shocked him with power Caplis describes as “ferocious.”

“Waiting to see if he would react, those were the longest seconds of my life,” he says.

Before Caplis and Bainbridge attached the AED to Thompson, he wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. According to Cherry Hills Village Police it took only one shock from the AED to resuscitate Dr. Thompson.

Thompson regained consciousness quickly and strongly. The father of two boys is expected to make a full recovery at Swedish Medical Center for treatment. .

“I was in the right place at the right time with the right people,” he said Monday.

“It would have felt so incredibly helpless to have been there without the machine,” adds Caplis, co-host of KHOW’s Caplis and Craig Silverman show. He’s had the defibrillator for a year and a half because of another of his jobs, as a little league baseball coach.

“You can know nothing about CPR or AEDs and they can still save somone. They’re that good,” he said.

Paul Insco was a referee working the 1996 McMinn County-McMinn Central game.

Paul Insco the Survivor ( third from left )

All of a sudden, Inscho suffered a heart attack and fell to the ground in what was a scary incident for everybody.

The football game was quickly forgotten as Inscho’s life hung in the balance.

Fortunately, Dr. David Byrd and Dr. Craig Riley were at the game that night and provided the medical assistance Insco needed.

“From Friday night to the next Tuesday I don’t remember anything so a lot of what I’m telling you is what others have told me,” Inscho said.

“I know it was near the end of the first half and apparently I just dropped to the ground. Dr. Riley said I was likely dead before I hit the ground. Dr. Riley and Dr. Byrd were there and after 15 or 20 minutes of CPR and seven shocks with a defibrillator, they got a heart beat.”

Insco was rushed to Woods Memorial Hospital and later transferred to the University of Tennessee hospital. At UT hospital, it was discovered he had 95 percent blockage of one his ventricles leading to his heart and had an emergency angioplasty.

Inscho is now a TSSAA referee supervisor while Dr. Byrd and Dr. Riley both have private practices. Insco went back onto the field as a referee in 1998 and last year became a TSSAA game officials supervisor.

“(AED) It’s something that you hope you don’t have to use, but you have it if you need it,” Inscho said. “I didn’t know if either Central or McMinn had an AED and I’m glad they do now. Dr. Riley and Dr. Byrd, and I’m sure there were others as well, are the heroes in all this.”

During standard team running drills, on a cool, overcast day, the perfectly healthy teenager collapsed.

Ted Okerstrom the Survivor

“Just remember waking up in the hospital a couple days later,” says 16-year-old wide receiver Ted Okerstrom of the Wayzata High School football team.

What happened in between is teamwork that ultimately saved Ted’s life.

After he collapsed, it didn’t take long to realize that Ted was in cardiac arrest. He wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

“Teddy went down,” Coach Matt Lombardi said. “He just fell, he was down. I went and saw him, and about in 3 seconds I looked down at Teddy and he went from quick breaths to no breaths.”

“Eyes rolled back in the head. Just totally lifeless,” says Dee Schrader, the school’s athletic administrative assistant who is EMT-trained and does CPR training at the school.

Within moments, Coach Matt Lombardi was performing CPR.

Lombardi sent word to the school’s athletic office. Dee Schrader is the secretary, but she’s also an EMT. She grabbed one of the school’s AEDs — automated external defibrillators — and hustled to the field. She handed it off to one of the boys.

“‘Take this AED and get it down to R.J. and the student who’s down.’ He grabbed it and ran, and you probably have heard, little did I know, I handed it to the fastest runner at Wayzata High School,” said Schrader.

“That was about a two three minute period that I will never forget…it was a fight,” says Coach Lombardi.

“‘We’re going to make it, we got people coming, let’s go, let’s keep fighting, let’s keep fighting,’ Just very much coaching-type stuff,” recalled Lombardi.

“I got the AED opened up and on him,” assistant football coach Ryan “R.J.” Johnson said. “And basically once we turned that AED on, we listened to that and let it run the show.”

“(It) told us when we needed to shock, which we did, and it worked perfectly,” recalled Schrader.

“I know people around here are very humbled that it could have been a lot worse, but it turned out very good,” says coach R.J.

“I put that breath in and I felt that pulse. It was ‘he’s got a pulse. Oh my gosh,’ ” says Dee Schrader recalling the events on the field last week.

Ted has no family history of heart problems. For now, his sudden cardiac arrest is a mystery. Doctors implanted a defibrillator in his chest.

“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare to get this type of a phone call. We’re just really blessed and thankful that it turned out this way. That we have our son…he’s our Teddy,” says Ted’s father Norm Okerstrom.

Just thank you. Thank you for the coaches and see you out on the field,” says Ted. “Want to stay involved in Wayzata football because it is a big part of my life.”

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

Emilio Martinez the Survivor

17-year old Martinez had just wrapped up his daily workout in his advanced weights class Monday afternoon.

Physical education teacher Jay Johnson, an assistant Cienega football coach, saw Martinez faint, hit his chin on a weight bench barbell as he collapsed and drop to the floor unconscious.

Johnson is trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, as are all of Cienega’s coaches. He began attending to Martinez as a student ran to get Schneider.

“When I got there, I immediately assessed the situation and knew right away we needed the AED,” Schneider said.

“I’ve never actually had to use an AED or even do CPR before,” she said. “I’m trained for both, but never have actually been in a situation where I had to do it. It was sort of an out-of-body experience. I guess the training just took over and I was just doing what I knew to do to help him.”

“When we were done,” Schneider said, “I plugged this into my computer and it gave the paramedics and doctors a printout of everything that happened from the time I opened the AED to the time I closed it, including all his heart rates and any other info.”

Martinez, a seemingly healthy athlete in a family with no history of heart conditions, has been at University Medical Center since the collapse, frequently visited by friends and family members.

Philip, a landscaper, and Alberta, a bus driver, both 43, were at work Monday when they heard.

“This just came out of nowhere” the father said. “Right now, we just can’t say how grateful we are to the school, to Deana and Jay, and to everyone that helped keep him alive.”

“Without that (device) and without her there, the doctors said my son would have probably died,” said Phil Martinez. “. . . I can’t tell you how grateful my wife and I are that they were there and handling the situation the way they did.”

“It’s a shock,” Philip Martinez said. “At 17 years old, these kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen. The fact my son is here is testament to why schools should have them.”

“I’m just glad they were there to help me,” said Emilio, adding that the last thing he remembers was finishing class and heading to the locker room. It wasn’t until late Monday night that he awoke in the hospital to find his father by his bedside.

“I have no words,” said a tearful Alberta, who said she couldn’t sleep Monday because of the shock of nearly losing Emilio, the youngest of four who enjoys wrestling and is a middle linebacker on the football team.

“How do you say, ‘Thank you. Our son is here today because of what you did’?”

“That AED? It’s already paid for itself. Every (school) better have one. Even if they never need it, they better have one.

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

Dr. Ken Johnson and referee Danny Rogers

Rogers, 61, was thirsty and walked across the field to get some water. That’s the last thing he remembers.

 “I remember a black cloud coming over me,” he said. “I woke up subconsciously and heard this voice. It didn’t sound like a man or a woman, but it said, ‘You’re going to be all right.’ That’s when I sat right up.”

The voice was that of Johnson, the team physician for Laurence Manning Academy.

I was on the sidelines and saw a referee coming towards me,” he said.

“He kind of just fell down. It looked like somebody had poured a bucket of water on him when I got to him. He was in full cardiac arrest. I began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and one of the other coaches started chest compression.”

Johnson said he normally has a defibrillator, but because Laurence Manning was the visiting team, they didn’t have one that night. It was at least five minutes before the ambulance arrived.

“By keeping Danny’s circulation and oxygen level up, his heart started re-circulating, and he came to,” Johnson said. “He doesn’t remember any of it. He wanted to get up and get back on the field, but I told him he wasn’t going anywhere except to the closest emergency room.”

“They all got to see what CPR was like for real,” he said. “Several of the coaches said they had seen it on TV, but never in person. CPR is a life-saver, and people need to learn how to do it.

“They saw it save a man’s life. … This man was not with us, he was gone. Probably for 5, 6 minutes he had no pulse, no respiration, but by doing CPR, he had no brain damage. He actually didn’t really have a heart attack because we kept the blood circulating.”

“We got to him within 10 seconds after he collapsed,” he said. “I think that was key – that we were so fast on the scene, which gave his heart time to start beating again. I just thank God that he’s still here.”

And what’s even more amazing is Rogers had never experienced any heart problem up to that point. There was no history of heart attacks in his family, either.

“I had a physical two months before this happened,” he said. “My cholesterol was fine and everything else was great. I run a martial arts school and I stay in good shape.” Johnson, who lives in Manning, reiterated that CPR saves lives.

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

The date Aug. 28, 2008, will remain with Thelen for the rest of his life. It was the opening of high school football, a night which he had been a part of numerous times in his 37-year coaching career.

The Big Reds had traveled to Holt for the season opener. Sexton scored a touchdown late in the first half when Thelen, the Big Reds’ receivers coach, turned toward the bench to congratulate his players.

A wave of dizziness enveloped him. Then, darkness.

For nearly 15 minutes, Thelen, 62, was dead on the sidelines, the result of a heart attack.

Paramedics stationed nearby responded swiftly.

“If not for the ambulance, I would be dead,” Thelen said. “They had to use the defibrillator paddles on me twice.”

Stunned Sexton fans, players and coaches watched as medical staff worked frantically to resuscitate him, ripping apart his red “Sexton Football” shirt.

“It was scary, that’s for sure,” Sexton head coach Dan Boggan said. “We’re really happy that he came back. It didn’t look good.”

His wife of four years, Maureen, bolted out of her seat in the stands. She doesn’t remember how she reached her husband’s side.

“I don’t remember anybody’s face around him,” she said. “I don’t even know what I was thinking.”It was pretty devastating and horrifying. He was shaking back and forth. It didn’t feel like 15 minutes.”

Medical staff rushed him to Ingham Regional Medical Center where surgeons inserted a defibrillator. He stayed in intensive care before being released on the following Sunday.

Two days later, Thelen suffered a second heart attack. He spent another two weeks at Sparrow Hospital recuperating.

Incredibly, Thelen was back at Sexton game four weeks after his heart attacks. This time, he watched from the stands alongside his wife.

The Thelens’ home will be filled with gifts, children and grandchildren for the holidays, and no one is more appreciative than Thelen.

“I’m grateful to have the family at home,” he said. “I shouldn’t be here, so it means all the more to me.”

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

Rick Kezima

He was out playing touch football with his sons and some friends last Thanksgiving when he suddenly collapsed. His heart had stopped beating. “I was going out for a pass, next thing I remember I was being wheeled out of surgery at Mass. General.”

But luckily, one of Rick’s friends is a state trooper. He started performing CPR right away. “They thought I was messing around, but he saw my eyes glazed over and knew just what to do,” said Rick.

And that trooper’s wife sells portable defibrillators and actually had one in her car. So they used the device to keep Rick’s heart beating until the EMTs got there. “She sells them, but never used on before but she did it and showed anyone can use one,” explained Rick.

Rick says he realizes how lucky he is to be alive and spending thanksgiving with family.

He hopes his story will help save others. He explains, “Now it’s really starting to really hit me. It makes you appreciate things. People do take life for granted.”