First Aid Corps

JOSE “Kenny” Martinez owes his life to his friends, to Glenreagh’s volunteer Community First Responders (CFR) and to a quick-thinking publican.

Jose Kenny Martinez the Survivor

The Wells Crossing man had a heart attack while he was having lunch at Glenreagh’s Golden Dog Hotel on January 16 last year.

Fortunately a team of four CFR volunteers was just five minutes away, having just returned from attending a motorcycle accident.

Publican Warren Dean had already phoned the ambulance to report one of his customers was having chest pains.

CFR volunteers Unice McPherson, retired paramedic Geoff Hicks, Judith Hanson and Steve Green performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on Mr Martinez and delivered electric shocks to his heart with a defibrillator until the ambulance arrived, stabilised the patient and rushed him to Coffs Harbour Health Campus.

Mr Martinez has since been fitted with a pacemaker and is now in good health, but he’ll never be able to return to his trade or to the punishing work schedule that almost ended his life.

“There’s a computer in there (pacemaker) that tells them what I’ve been doing so I can’t lie, he said

The CFR team earned his gratitude, so too his friends Suzanne Young, Rod Forrest and Lee-Anne Johnston.

“My friends got me out of the property and told me I was working too much,” Kenny said. “They took me to the pub for lunch – otherwise I’d have carked it in my shed.”

Up until his heart attack, the tall, fit 47-year-old boilermaker and welder also operated a portable mill business on his own and was so focused on developing his business and his property he never stopped working.

He said yesterday he had “only just come good” after 10 trips to Sydney for a series of operations.

“I’ve been to hell and back,” he said.

“I keep thinking I’m going to get another shock.”

Mike Chandler will always have a place in his heart for his mates.

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The 71-year-old Naseby man says he would be dead without their quick actions after he had a heart attack in his local Ancient Briton Hotel last week.

“I wouldn’t be here talking to you, that’s for sure,” he said from his Dunedin Hospital bed yesterday.

“Apparently, I was dead. My heart had stopped and they brought me around. It would have been bye, bye bird.”

Mr Chandler says his life was saved by locals who used a heart defibrillator recently installed in the hotel.

“I was the first customer. I’m very grateful people knew how to use the machine. It was a great thing for me that they did.”

The machine was one of the last items funded by the Maniototo-Wedderburn branch of the Red Cross, before it disbanded last year after 70 years, due to a decline in membership.

Former branch president Lesley Pocknee said yesterday she was thrilled and proud it had proved its worth.

“The whole point of having it was for a situation exactly like this – to save someone’s life that otherwise might not have been saved,” she said.

“When I heard about it, I went cold and crumbly. It was brilliant news.” Mr Chandler said he remembered nothing of the incident.

“Apparently, I was playing bowls on the Thursday night before it happened and I don’t even remember that,” he said.

“All I know is we popped in for a beer for myself and a wine for my wife, Lynette, and I didn’t even get to drink the darned thing.

“There’s only 120 people in Naseby, so we usually go to the bottom pub [Royal Hotel] on the Thursday night and the top pub [Ancient Briton Hotel] on the Friday night. I was lucky it was a Friday night, because that’s the pub with the defibrillator.”

However, the incident would still prove costly, he said.

“I’ve promised to go and see the boys when I get out and I might have to shout them a drink or two.”

Senior firefighter Paul Hart, of the Naseby Volunteer Fire Service, said the defibrillator had been a lifesaver.

“When we got there, the locals already had it out. It was a real team effort. He would have been dead for a good 15 minutes. He was a very lucky boy.

“He’s told us he’s going to buy us all a few beers when he gets back.”

George Best’s younger brother has paid tribute to a hotel manager who saved his life.

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Ian Best (44) was staying at Norbreck Castle Hotel in Blackpool with his wife on January 11 when he suffered a heart attack.

While having a drink at the bar Mr Best began to feel sick, his vision blurred and he lost consciousness.

Fortunately hotel events manager Mark Brockbank was on hand. He grabbed a defibrillator and sprang into action, keeping the supermarket manager alive until an ambulance arrived.

Mark said: “I was trained by the ambulance service and it just took over.”

Ian, who lives in Torquay, said: “There will never be the words to express my thanks.

“If it wasn’t for Mark and the fact the hotel had a defibrillator, I could have been going back down the motorway in a coffin.”

It was Friday afternoon at the Hampton Inn on Lee Burbank Highway, a lazy summer Friday.

An alarm had gone off at the hotel in error, and firefighters had responded around 4:30 p.m. and quickly determined it was nothing of concern.

As they were leaving though, Capt. Glen Rich and Firefighter Tony DiGiovanni noticed a woman in distress in the lobby.

She was having chest pains, but told firefighters to leave her alone and she’d be fine.

Seconds later she collapsed and went into full cardiac arrest.

The two firefighters immediately hit the floor, performing CPR as the woman slipped closer and closer to death.

The rest of the Engine 4 crew, under the direction of Deputy Chief Jim Cullen, quickly retrieved a defibrillator unit from the engine and brought it to aid Rich and DiGiovanni.

Time was running out as they hooked the woman up to the unit.

The automated unit immediately flashed a command to shock the woman ASAP.

They charged the defibrillator unit. They applied a massive shock to the woman.

She immediately sat up and gasped for air, clinging back to a life she nearly lost.

The firefighters also gasped, breathing a sigh of relief as it hit them that they had just saved the woman’s life.

Cataldo Ambulance transported the woman to the Mass General in Boston, where she received further treatment.

“This woman was extremely fortunate that things played out the way they did,” said Chief Gene Doherty. “It was only coincidence that we were there for the alarm when she went into cardiac arrest. It was a real good save and extremely lucky that we were there at that exact moment.”

The chief commended the entire Engine 4 and Ladder 1 crews for an extremely well-executed job.

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.