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“My best friend is there on that wall,” the fitness instructor said, pointing to the defibrillator hanging outside the community arenas at the WFCU Centre where she teaches fitness classes and staffs the reception desk.

Rose Wood the Saviour

On Friday at around 8 p.m., she was at the desk when a man ran out of a pickup hockey game telling her to call 911. Another player had collapsed on his way off the ice.

Right away, Wood’s safety training and her people-organizing skills kicked in.

“It was a team effort,” the 54-year-old grandmother of four boys said.

She instructed the other desker to call an ambulance, grabbed the defibrillator off the wall, rushed into the arena to where the man — who she can only describe as in his 40s and little heavy — was lying on the black rubber floor.

“I just did it,” Wood said, describing how she got down on the ground, shouted for help to get the man’s hockey jersey off, and asked a woman nearby to help her put the defibrillator pads on the man’s chest and under his right arm.

The other 20 or so people were told to stand back when she pressed the button on the defibrillator to release the electric charge.

“He jumped,” Wood said about the shock sent to the man’s heart. “I had never seen that before.”

She gave mouth-to-mouth while she instructed the woman nearby — whom Wood said she did not recognize, but would like to thank for her help — to do chest compressions on the man.

“It seemed like hours,” Wood said. “I yelled, ‘Where is that ambulance?’”

One player was posted to the arena entrance to hail the ambulance, a second was given the task of clearing a path in the crowd for the paramedics, and a third was told to help emergency workers cross the ice safely.

Doug Sweet, who manages the arena, said he could not confirm who the man was or where he was taken to hospital, but he said he believed he was taken to a hospital in Detroit.

“We know he’s doing well,” Sweet said, adding that all the staff are very proud of how Wood managed the situation.

“I just bawled my eyes out,” Wood said, describing her reaction once the paramedics took over. “I couldn’t stop,” she said, adding that she was still shaking a little on Monday night.

Wood regularly goes through safety training as a fitness instructor, but she has never had to put her skills into practice in real life, she said, despite having worked in this field since 1987.

“I never want to do it again, but if I have to, I have no qualms,” she said. In fact, she added jokingly, she wants to find out just how long the whole process took so that if she has to do it again, she can beat her time.

Wood joked that the defibrillator is the real hero of the story and thinks she might give the little machine a name, but the experience has made her more aware of where defibrillators are in public places, whether it’s at the mall where she was running errands on the weekend, or at the arena where her grandchildren play hockey in Belle River.

The arena has eight defibrillators, Sweet said, adding that since it opened, there have been six heart attacks.

With thousands of people attending games and playing games each night, he said, it’s almost inevitable one will happen at some point, but thanks to the defibrillators and trained staff, the arena is prepared for this type of emergency.

The staff are trained annually in CPR and defibrillator use and undergo quarterly emergency training.

“Everybody in these situations works as a team,” Sweet said.

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Ottawa paramedics said a 61-year-old man was playing hockey at the Kanata Recreation Complex when he collapsed around 10:30 p.m. Friday.

Off-duty firefighter Pat Aubry skated over, felt he had no pulse and immediately asked for someone to call 911 and get the public access defibrillator, according to Ottawa Fire Services.

“I was assessing him and as I was assessing him his eyes rolled back and he went purple, so I started CPR,” said firefighter Pat Aubry.

CPR and one shock from the defibrillator were delivered, and paramedics said the man’s pulse was back when they arrived.

“We set it up on him and the machine did what it was supposed to do,” Aubry said.

He was taken to hospital conscious and is in stable condition.

Aubry, who looked after the patient’s children while their mother was at the hospital, said he’s done CPR plenty of times on the job.

Still, he insists the accolades aren’t his alone.

“(People say) ‘Thanks a lot Pat, you’re the guy that saved him,’” he said. “I said no, it was a team effort, everybody helped.”

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NewsChannel Five’s Ann Rubin was there as Spiros was reunited with the people who saved his life.

The incident happened Monday at the Kirkwood Ice Rink.

Goalie Stephen Spiros was playing well, Little did he know someone else would have the best “save” of the night.

Spiros says, “I was having a good game and the next thing I know, I don’t know anything.”

Spiros had suffered a massive heart attack. But as he lay motionless, others took action.

First Craig Merrifield from the opposing team, ran for the AED. His own father had died from a heart attack, so he knew every moment mattered.

He says, “I know it at every rink, I know exactly where it is. I know which rinks have them, which rinks don’t.”

The Kirkwood rink has an AED. And thankfully, Spiro’s teammate Don Guenther knew how to use it.

He had recently been trained on the device through his church.

Guenther says, “I held my finger there and somebody said push the darn button and I boom pushed the button.”

It took two shocks, but by the time paramedics arrived, Spiros’s heart was beating.

They say that AED made all the difference.

Guenther says, “The paramedics told us that if we wouldn’t have responded so quickly, that we wouldn’t still have a goalie on our team.”

Jaguar’s coach Brian Robinson says, “If Steve had been anywhere else, had he been at the store, the theater, the outcome would have been very different.”

He spent nearly a week recovering at Des Peres Hospital.

And one of his first acts upon his release Sunday, thanking the men who saved his life.

He’ll wear a portable defibrillator for now. But doctors say his prognosis is good.

So is his outlook.

He says, “God wasn’t finished with me yet. So this was the first day of the rest of my life.”

Doctors told Spiros no hockey for at least 90 days. In the meantime, he’ll be cheering his teammates on, and talking up the importance of knowing how to use that AED.

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Paramedic Bruce Binda saved his teammate’s life when the man suffered a heart attack while playing hockey at a local arena around 11 a.m. Saturday.

“He collapsed on his hands and knees,” said Binda, who has been an emergency worker for 21 years but wasn’t on duty Saturday. “I thought he was injured.”

Still on the ice, Binda immediately began CPR and used the public Automated External Defibrillator, shocking the 41-year-old man three times.

Binda’s colleagues arrived and took over, transporting the man to hospital, where he’s conscious and speaking.

Paramedic Supt. Steven Leu said Binda is “one of the guys who, ironically, took the day off.”

The men were playing a regular-season game, said Binda, adding his friend of 10 years is married with two children.

“I’m pretty happy with the result,” said Binda.

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According to MD Ambulance, paramedics responded Sunday around 11:20 a.m. to the Agri-Twins Arena, where a 58-year-old man collapsed while playing hockey. The staff at the arena called 911 and then, with the help of a licensed practical nurse who happened to be in the building, defibrillated the man.

When paramedics arrived, the 58 year old was breathing on his own. He was taken by ambulance to Royal University Hospital in stable condition.

“This was a complete team effort and a perfect example of how the chain of survival in cardiac arrests works,” said MD Ambulance spokesperson Troy Davies in a statement.

“From the players recognizing the patient in cardiac arrest, calling 911, MD Ambulance dispatchers talking them through CPR, the rink staff grabbing the AED and shocking the patient, and finally paramedics stabilizing the patient en route to hospital – if one of those links drops, this patient would not have survived.”

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Simcoe County paramedics responded to a 911 call at the North Simcoe Sports and Recreation Centre in Midland on Nov. 1 after a man collapsed while playing hockey with friends.

“Bystanders and members of the hockey team immediately came to his aid, calling 911 and performing CPR,” Midland police Insp. Ron Wheeldon stated in a news release. “An AED was then successfully utilized to shock the man’s heart and regain a pulse.”

Paramedics continued life-saving measures and took the man to Georgian Bay General Hospital for treatment.

Parks and recreation director Bryan Peter was not at the arena when the incident happened, but said the man was there as part of a private hockey group rental.

“My understanding is that particular group has some volunteer firefighters and some police officers that would have been off duty, so they would have had lots of people that would have been trained,” he said. “Our staff is all trained, as well, so our guys grabbed the machine and (his teammates) fixed him up and an ambulance was called.”

The incident reportedly took place while the man was sitting on the bench.

“From what we heard, he was sitting on the bench and the guy next to him noticed he was having some problems,” Peter said, adding there are currently two AED machines in the building.

To the best of his knowledge, this was the first time one of the machines in the building has been used. However, it does mark the sixth successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest in Simcoe County directly attributed to the public-access defibrillator program.

“This is just a really good … example of how important they are,” said Peter. “Who knows when someone is going to experience a heart problem?”

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Ottawa paramedics said the 40-year-old man was playing hockey at Kanata’s John Mlacak arena around 12:30 p.m. when he collapsed after coming off the ice.

They said his teammates and an off-duty nurse started CPR and used a defibrillator from the arena to shock his heart.

When paramedics arrived they said the man had a pulse and was breathing on his own. They stabilized him and then brought him to hospital.

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“I played the first game, felt great. The last thing I remember after I played my game I was talking to one of my teammates and the next thing I know I wake up in the hospital in the Emergency Room,” Sink recalled.

Those at the rink know what saved him.

“It worked flawless; it ran better than EMT calls I’ve run with my crew back home that I trained with for years,”
Maggie Roberts, who was keeping score that night, told us.

When Wesley fell, she and two others with medical training rushed out to him. “And we just, the three of us…just got in there and just started assessing him and getting his gear off and we got the phone call to 911 going.”

She called for someone to grab the Automatic External Defibrillator she knew was on the wall.

“Within like 10 compressions we had the pads on and then started analyzing and it just happened so instantly that made the difference,” Roberts told us.

That shock saved Wesley’s life. “He’s a lucky man because normally these people, a good number of them, will pass away,” said Dr. Mark Sanz.

He added that Wesley’s heart went into a fatal rhythm, recovered by the AED. “I would give congratulations to whoever decided to put a defibrillator out there. They saved his life.”

That credit goes to Lynn Montgomery, a hockey player who died after suffering a sudden heart attack on the ice in 2008. The rink didn’t have a defibrillator back then but now it does, in his name.

And that very device saved Wesley. “if it wouldn’t have been for that, that would’ve been it. I mean, I would’ve been gone. It’s very unfortunate what happened to him, but essentially his dying saved my life,” Sink said.

“I feel if it wouldn’t have been for the crew here and that defibrillator, he wouldn’t be alive today. I mean, this rink saved his life,” added Wesley’s wife Theresa.

And hockey saved his heart. “in fact, that’s the first thing he asked the doctors, ‘can I play hockey again?’ The answer was, ‘you better,that saved your life’,” Wesley’s daughter Rebecca commented.

A month later, Wesley was already back on the ice and this time, he’s the one doing the saving.

Kenzie Lahey the Survivor

At first, the coaches thought he had had a seizure. They called over a paramedic they knew who happened to be watching the game.

Kenzie had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing.

“I really thought he was going to die,” said his mother, Tanya Lahey.

Paramedic Allan Keddy started performing CPR. A doctor rushed over to help.

Keddy continued with CPR until an ambulance arrived with a defibrillator. One shock and a few more chest compressions, and Kenzie’s pulse returned to normal.

Kenzie wants people to learn from his experience. At the same time, he doesn’t want to scare anyone.

“When they see what happened to me, they shouldn’t think it’s going to happen to them. Don’t be afraid. Just go out there and play,” he said.

Kenzie has a followup appointment with a doctor in May.

He’s not playing competitive hockey, but has been practising his shot in his backyard.

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That’s when players rushed out and hollered for 35-year-old city worker Brian Nielsen to grab the defibrillator.

Brian Nielson the Saviour

The arena is located very close to a fire station and the Civic, but Nielsen’s actions were so quick he revived Senecal before emergency crews arrived.

Nielsen said he just followed training.

“It’s stressful, but you kind of just go through the paces of what you’re trained to do,” said Nielsen, who has revived a man before at the arena.

“It’s just kind of overwhelming. It’s hard to explain.”

Morneau said defibrillators are very easy to use, telling the user when to give a patient a shock and when to compress.

But for the hockey players, it was a nerve-wracking few moments.

“It could happen to any of us when we’re pushing ourselves to that level, trying to play like 20-year-olds,” said McLaughlin.