First Aid Corps

Officer Stephen DeBrular of the Aquia Harbor Police Department saved a life.

Stephen DeBrular the Saviour

When a resident of the gated community in North Stafford went into cardiac arrest, DeBrular’s CPR and defibrillator training kicked in.

DeBrular had just left the scene of a call for shots fired when he received the cardiac arrest call.

“When I got the scene it was chaotic; [I had] the husband waving me down and when I got there, it was an older female – no breathing, no pulse, no response of any kind,” DeBrular said.

He immediately began performing CPR and using an AED, an automated external defibrillator, which uses electric therapy for those in cardiac arrest. It was a tense six minutes before the EMS arrived. “I was finally able to get a pulse and her breathing back,” DeBrular commented.

DeBrular, who has worked at the department for the past six years, has had a wealth of law enforcement experience including military police and state police work, so when he got a call for cardiac arrest this past Winter, he knew he had to act fast.

“What I was told by the doctors was that someone in cardiac arrest for the amount of time she was in and having the AED and CPR being done at that point was probably the key point in saving her life. They said she had a less than 20% chance at that point, which actually ended up being a less than two percent chance. If I hadn’t been there when I was, there was no way she could have survived,” said DeBrular.

Chief Patricia S. Harman of the Aquia Harbor Police Department has helped to create and maintain a team that certifies officers and local citizens in first aid, CPR and use of the AED machine. In a life-saving coincidence, “The cert team had just given us a refresher course – we had just recertified for CPR a couple of weeks to a month prior to this incident,” said Harman.

The woman did not return requests for comment to maintain her privacy, but has made a full recovery since the incident and has no after effects.

To celebrate DeBrular’s life saving actions, the department has nominated him for the AED Life Saver Award and the Stafford Sheriff’s Office Life Saver Award.

“It’s a great feeling. I don’t feel like I’m a hero or anything like that. I was glad I was able to do my job and I’m glad I had the training. I was just at the right place, at the right time, with the right training. It makes me feel really good that she can continue on with her life, so it’s a great feeling,” DeBrular said.

The incident began around 5:45 p.m. Sunday during a shift change, Paul said.

A homeowner in the area of Merrill and Sheldon roads called 911 after the patient, a visitor at the home, went into cardiac arrest.

Officer Megan Paul the Saviour

Officer Clint Pace the Saviour

Officer Daniel Bromley the Saviour

Paul, Pace and Bromley were at the scene within three minutes. They grabbed their medic bags, which include an automated external defibrillator, and ran into the home, where they found the woman lying on the floor with no signs of breathing and no pulse.

Paul knelt and began chest compressions while Pace worked on the patient’s airway. Bromley, a rookie, prepared the AED.

The AED analyzed the woman’s condition and Bromley pushed the button, administering a shock as the machine instructed.

“It said to keep doing CPR, so we continued,” Paul said. “After a little while, she started gasping and was breathing on her own. We got a pulse back.”

Livingston County EMS and Hamburg Township firefighters soon arrived, and paramedics took over, administering a second shock to the woman, Paul said.

The woman was transported to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, where she remains in the intensive care unit, officials said.

Paul credited the officers’ training, which they receive from the Hamburg Township Fire Department, for the success in helping the patient.

“They train us on CPR and keep us updated,” she said.

Randy Stevens has a lot to be thankful for this holiday season.

On Nov. 8 Stevens, 51, was dead for at least 20 minutes, kept alive by CPR administered by his girlfriend, Lisa Wright, by Makakilo firefighters and finally by paramedic Shirley Ann Cazinha.

Randy Stevens the Survivor

The firefighters used a defibrillator three times to send dosages of electrical energy to Stevens’ heart to try to restart it while he lay on the floor of his second-floor Waiko Place bedroom.

When city Emergency Medical Services paramedic Cazinha and emergency medical technician Kaipo Hayashida arrived at the two-story Makakilo home after 11 p.m., Stevens’ skin was purple. He had no pulse and was not breathing.

Doctors later said he had suffered “a sudden death cardiac arrest.”

On Thanksgiving, Stevens met with Cazinha and Hayashida for the first time since his heart attack.

“I am very thankful,” Stevens told reporters. “I am very blessed.”

Cazinha, who has been a paramedic for nearly four years, said her heart dropped to her stomach when an EMS dispatcher told her and Hayashida by radio to respond to a “51-year-old male in cardiac arrest.”

“There were cars in the driveway,” Cazinha recalled. “We couldn’t get our gurney in, so we just went in.”

Cazinha said firefighters had already tried unsuccessfully three times to restart Steven’s heart with the defibrillator.

Even after shocking Steven’s heart two more times, Cazinha said, “there was no response.”

“There was nothing to indicate that his heart was operating.”

Cazinha said she continued to perform CPR on Stevens, shocking his heart for a sixth time while the ambulance was taking him and Wright to Pali Momi Medical Center.

“I kept pounding on his chest,” Cazinha said.

The sixth defibrillator shock resuscitated him.

“There was a nice rhythm.” Cazinha said. “There was good beating, good pulse. His color started coming back. He started to look pink again.”

At that point Stevens remembers waking up in the ambulance, hearing the siren and Wright telling him to wake up.

“I thought I was dreaming,” he said.

Cazinha said Stevens started talking at that point, saying, “I love you, baby.”

Cazinha said she called out to Wright, who was sitting in the front of the ambulance.

“He’s talking. She was crying. I was crying,” Cazinha said.

Wright, who was an EMT with Hawaii and Maui counties, added, “You never think this will happen to your own loved ones. When it happens to your loved one, it’s a different ballgame. I never thought it was going to happen to me.”

Also joining the group Thursday was Deputy Sheriff Bryan Marciel, a neighbor, who helped Wright administer CPR on Stevens.

Wright also credited another neighbor, Dr. Jonathan Paladino, a cardiologist, for his assistance Nov. 8.

Wright and Stevens said his heart attack shows how important it is to have “someone in every household learn CPR.”

“I am the living example,” said Stevens, who works as a property and land manager for Edmund C. Olson Trust.

Two of his seven teenage children are now CPR-qualified.

Stevens, who had just completed a physical examination and had no history of high blood pressure or cholesterol problems before his heart attack, now has an automatic internal cardiac defibrillator implanted in his chest. Similar to a pacemaker, the device constantly monitors his heart rhythm and automatically administers shocks for various life-threatening arrhythmias.

Hayashida, who hopes to qualify as a city paramedic, had been working as an EMT for only two months when he and Cazinha responded to the emergency.

“His case was pretty unique,” said Hayashida. “This was first case he saw when a person came back from a cardiac arrest.”

It had been a pretty ordinary week.

Patricia Cifello’s 47th birthday had fallen on Monday.

Patricia Cifello the Survivor

The family had a little party Tuesday.

Then the “event” occurred Wednesday, Sept. 26.

Her husband Tom had left following dinner to go to a nearby 7-11 to gas up for the next day’s commute to Boston where he works as a union bricklayer for New England Restoration of Wilmington.

“It was just a regular day,” Tom said.

Until he returned home and found Patricia unconscious on the kitchen floor.

He rushed to her, and cradled her head in his hands, and screamed “Patty” twice.

She was not breathing and had no pulse. His 15-year-old son Jeffrey, the youngest of the couple’s three boys, came from his room.

“I started to do CPR,” Tom said. His company had trained him in CPR years ago, he said.

His son called 911.

Wareham Patrolmen Paul Somers and Michael Phinney arrived at the couple’s 35 Choctaw Drive home in what seemed like less than a minute, he said.

Tom said the timing and other details were filled in for him after the fact. He was too caught up in the effort to revive Patricia to take close note of the time and other details.

The officers took over, doing chest compression.

Within another minute or two, they brought in the defibrillator.

Agonizing moments later, they uttered welcome words. They had “a pulse.”

“The CPR I did might have helped but the defibrillator definitely saved my wife’s life. There’s no doubt about it,” Tom said.

Patricia was transported to Tobey Hospital and then to Brigham and Women’s cardiovascular unit in Boston.

She was placed in a drug-induced coma, and her body temperature lowered to 94.1 degrees to prevent brain damage.

Patricia, who had suffered an arrhythmia, an abnormal heart beat, was taken off the medication last Friday, and was soon able to open her eyes, and then blink to her husband.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Tom said. She was soon speaking again. “It was incredible,” he said.

A pacemaker with a defibrillator component was implanted to combat future arrhythmia.

She’s back home now, and “100 percent back to who she was,” he said.

They went to the bank together Friday, before doing some bills together. Then Patricia relaxed on the couch. She said she still gets tired.

Tom had nothing but praise for the officers. “They were unbelievable. Everything just fell into place. The police were here immediately.”

Lt. Bill England, a 25-year veteran of the Westmoreland County Sheriff’s Office, aged 60, said he was alone in his home in the Stratford Harbour section of the county. He was watching television in his living room on a Tuesday in January, about 8:30 p.m.

At first he thought the feeling in his chest was indigestion, he said, but soon the pain became worse. He started sweating, and his left arm felt like someone was sticking pins in it.

He called the Sheriff’s Office, where a dispatcher summoned an ambulance. The dispatcher also called fellow deputy Eric Molinares, who lives next door to England, and Vicky Beasley, a full-time paramedic with the county and a volunteer with the Montross Volunteer Rescue Squad.

Beasley said she drove from her home to England’s house. Molinares was already there and had retrieved the portable defibrillator from his police cruiser.

Beasley said she could tell right away that England was in trouble. She asked that a helicopter be sent to move him quickly to the hospital.

“He had a gray, ashen look,” she said. “He was sweating profusely. He was giving me an 8-out-of-10 chest pain. It was classic.”Beasley said she and the others were checking England’s vital signs and talking with him about his medical history when he went into cardiac arrest.

“He just reared back and gasped for breath,” she said.

Beasley said it reminded her of a person having a seizure. It was the first time she’d seen it.

“Most of the time we don’t get to see what the body does when the heart stops,” she said.

England said he remembers talking with Beasley but nothing after that.

“There was no pain. I just went to sleep,” he said.

The group pulled England from the couch to the floor. Beasley said she could not find a carotid pulse, so the trio hooked him to the defibrillator and gave him one shock to restore a normal heart rhythm.

The group continued to help him with his breathing and performed CPR. Soon he was moaning and breathing on his own, Beasley said. In the ambulance he responded to her questions.

A medical helicopter landed nearby at a farm owned by England’s mother. The air crew took him to Mary Washington, where he was treated by Dr. Ashok Prasad and Dr. Alex Na. One week later, Na performed quadruple bypass surgery.

England said he’s fine now and has returned to work.