Sylvia Eisele the Survivor

Their ages ranged from 75 to 86.

As two other swimmers who were not competing in the race watched from behind the starting block, their eyes locked on one of the competitors who gracefully swam from wall to wall.

“Look at lane 5,” one of them said. “Such a smooth stroke.”

Indeed, lane 5 was full of grace as Sylvia Eisele — who nearly died during a race two years ago — embarked on a memorable day.

In addition to her aquatic elegance, Eisele did make a really big splash on Saturday at Gandy Pool in Lakeland.

Following a two-year absence from competitive swimming, the 82-year-old from the Cypress Lake section of Fort Myers returned to the water in record-setting fashion.

As her husband, Nicholas, watched from the sidelines, Eisele competed in three races and set Florida Senior Games age group records in every one.

“It’s been a great day for her,” Nicholas proudly stated.

“I enjoy the water. I love the water,” Eisele said. “I should have been a fish, not a human being.”

For the past two years, Eisele was a fish out of water.

Two years ago, swimming and everything else in her life came to a sudden halt. Near the end of a long day at a Canadian national competition in Toronto — close to the couple’s home in Mississauga — Eisele suffered a heart incident during a race.

“Two arm lengths from the wall, I felt a pain in my head and I was gone,” she recalled. “I was sinking.”

“Her heart stopped,” said Nicholas.

After being pulled out of the water, lifeguards quickly went to work. One provided mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while the other grabbed a defibrillator.

“I was dead on the deck,” Eisele said. “They had to get a defibrillator to get my heart going.”

The prompt response saved Eisele’s life.

“We were so lucky that there was such good medical help available,” Nicholas said.

Her recuperation in a hospital lasted nine days.

Her absence from competitive swimming lasted two years.

“It’s been rough on her because she’s been a competitor all her life,” Nicholas said.

Before she arrived in North America more than a half-century ago, Eisele was an elite swimmer in her native Austria.

The competitive juices that flowed back then — be it in swimming, tennis, cycling or downhill skiing — are still present today in the pool.

“I like competition. I’m a very competitive person,” she said.

Eisele has been a fixture in the local swim scene since she and her husband moved to Fort Myers 25 years ago. She is a longtime member of the Swim Florida club program run by Mac Kennedy. Eisele still practices right next to the program’s young swimmers.

“Mac gives me a lane. He treats me very nicely,” she said.

Eisele, who has competed around the globe — from Australia to Brazil to Germany to New Zealand and has held world records in masters swimming — showed no signs of rust as she returned to the lanes for competition on Saturday.

Accompanied by a device that is implanted near her collarbone in order to make sure her heart beats the way it’s supposed to, Eisele set new age group records for the women’s 80-84 division in the 100 yard breastroke (2:02), 100 yard individual medley (2:02) and 50-yard breastroke (:53.50).

“She swims the 50 faster than I can walk it,” said Nicholas, 85.

On this day, the records didn’t carry quite as much significance for Eisele. Simply being back in the pool for competitive races was enough of a reward.

“I like to be active,” she said. “I like to do things to stay healthy, mentally and physically, that’s the key.”

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“All those people saved my life. There are no two ways about it,” the Santa Fe, N.M., man said Friday, after taking his daily post-operative half-mile walk as he recuperates at his son’s home in Denver.

Luke Johnson, Brianne Jones, Alicia Whiteside & Travis Newcomb the Saviours

“To me it was truly amazing that I was so lucky, because 99 percent of the time I am not in those circumstances, and I couldn’t have gotten that help. If I’d been driving, or on Quandary Peak, I wouldn’t have made it,” he said.

As it was, Best and his friend Carole Whitney of Denver were wading through the Hot Springs Pool after swimming laps, shortly after 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29.

“My vision was funny, and Carole says I said something, and then I don’t remember anything until I was being helped onto the gurney and being wheeled into the ambulance,” he recalled.

In between were several tense minutes when no one knew what the outcome might be.

Whitney said Best went underwater, and at first she thought he was clearing his ears.

“But when my internal alarm sounded, I pulled him up and he was unconscious,” she recalled in an email sent to friends and family.

Whitney cried for help, and the pool’s lifeguards kicked into gear, recalled Travis Newcomb, assistant pool manager.

“Ali jumped in and made the rescue. She pulled him out, and we activated our emergency plan,” Newcomb said, referring to lifeguard Alicia Whiteside. “All the lifeguards went into action.”

While lifeguard Luke Johnson called 911, Newcomb grabbed the pool’s automated external defibrillator (AED) and ran to the lodge side of the pool. By the time he got there, lifeguard Brianne Jones was already performing rescue breathing on Best. A doctor who was at the pool at the time performed the chest compressions, and a nurse assisted.

“They went through a cycle of CPR, and then we made sure everything was dry and ready, and got the AED hooked up,” Newcomb said. Best had a pulse, but it was wildly irregular — just the circumstance the AED is made for. The team applied the shock treatment twice and the device successfully corrected Best’s heart rhythm.

“He took some breaths, he became conscious, and pretty soon he could answer questions correctly,” Newcomb said. Best actually sat up while the Glenwood Springs Fire Department’s emergency medical technicians were rolling in the gurney.

By this time, all eyes at the pool were on the dramatic life-and-death action.

“We were trying to block the scene, but it’s pretty out in the open,” Newcomb said. “Everybody could see what was happening. When he came to and was wide awake, then everybody clapped.

“It was pretty incredible to see, somebody who passed away, and he came back to life in front of us,” Newcomb added.

This was his second time to use the AED in a real-life situation, and it has worked both times, Newcomb said.

Best was out of the pool and breathing, but he was still in plenty of hot water.

Once he arrived at the Valley View Hospital emergency room, Dr. Steven Heilbrunn’s angiogram revealed that two of Best’s four main heart arteries were 99 percent blocked, while the other two were 60 to 70 percent blocked.

This was stunning news regarding a man who routinely runs three miles and does 50 to 70 push-ups and sit-ups a day, climbed a 14er this summer, has a low resting pulse and low blood pressure, and was pronounced by his doctor earlier this year as “one of the healthiest people in my practice.”

The blockage was so extreme, Whitney said, that Heilbrunn and his team elected to airlift Best to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction rather than risk the extra time and elevation gain of a flight to Denver.

“By 8:30 p.m. he was on the helicopter, and he went into surgery at 11 p.m.,” Whitney said.

The quadruple bypass surgery took four and a half hours.

After getting a call, Best’s son, Dr. Alan Best, a neuroradiologist, and daughter-in-law, Dr. Flora Waples, an emergency room doctor, drove over from their home in Denver, met up with Whitney in Glenwood Springs, and continued west to Grand Junction.

“At 9:30 the next morning, we were in his room talking to him,” Whitney said. “He was sitting up and we were having an alert and interesting conversation.”

Best spent two days in intensive care at St. Mary’s, and was discharged on Wednesday. He plans to spend the rest of November recuperating at his son’s home in Denver.

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According to East Meadow Fire Department Chief Carl Pugliese, the call came in just before 10 a.m.

“We were alerted that there was an unresponsive man at the Aquatic Center gym,” Pugliese said. “Probably about half way there, the dispatcher called me back and said that the lifeguard said that they were in the process of doing CPR.”

Lifeguards from the facility used an external defibrillator and began resuscitation efforts until the East Meadow Fire Department arrived. Once on scene, the rescue crew, led by Lt. Giovanni Bautista, took over and they were able to restart the man’s heart and breathing.

“By the time they got him to an ambulance, the gentleman regained his heartbeat,” Pugliese said. “He was actually breathing on his own with oxygen.”

The 66 year-old man, who was not identified, was taken via Ambulance to Nassau University Medical Center. He has since been moved to the Cardiac Care Unit. He is expected to remain in the hospital for “a week or two,” according to Pugliese, but doctors expect the man to make a full recovery.

The doctor congratulated the rescue team for their quick response and expedient efforts.

“He thinks that the quick intervention actually saved the gentleman’s life,” Pugliese said.

Marc Alfonso the Saviour

He was in cardiac arrest when Marc Alfonso, 29 grabbed his $2,300 first-aid kit from his car and found Girard-Lau doing chest compressions on Dufour.

While lifeguard Girard-Lau worked pumping Dufour’s chest, Alfonso put a tube into his mouth, meant to keep the tongue off the back of the mouth so the airway stayed open.

He grabbed his bag-valve mask that was attached to an oxygen tank and put it over Dufour’s face and ventilated him by squeezing the mask, distributing pure oxygen into his lungs.

A minute later, Alfonso grabbed his $1,700 defibrillator and shocked the 45-year-old’s heart.

Dufour, who is still recovering from the life-threatening heart trouble, knows how unbelievably lucky he was that day.

“My friends say, ‘Buy a lottery ticket,’” Dufour said Wednesday. “I tell them I’ve already won.”

He also realizes that “thank you” is about all he can say.

“What do you want me to say?” he chuckled. “He’s a good guy. He saved my life.”

In 2008, after Alfonso’s best friend, Andrew Dolsji, died in a car accident, he swore to himself that he would never be without the training and equipment required to make a difference to someone’s life.

He took countless hours of medical training. He purchased a state-of-the-art first-aid kit that includes the battery-powered defibrillator — and it’s always in his car.

Alfonso sees himself as part of a big team that saved Dufour.

“There were the paramedics . . . a team of doctors, a team of nurses, a team of recovery specialists, everyone contributed to it,” he said.

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He has remained fit all of his life, so it came as a surprise last week when he had a heart attack during his daily swim at the Northwest Family YMCA.

“When I would swim, I would be a little short of breath for about 10 minutes, but then it would correct itself,” Flippin said. “But on Nov. 15, after 10 minutes, that’s when I had my heart attack instead.”

James Flippin the Survivor

Linda Crabtree was the only lifeguard on duty at the time, and immediately called for help on her radio. With her quick reaction and the help of Melissa Betts and Elizabeth Janda, the three were able to pull Flippin out of the water.

“He’s 6 feet 4; I couldn’t keep him all the way out,” Crabtree said. “I kept his head out until the other two ladies came to help. Two of us pulled and one of us pushed.”

Once they got him on the pool deck, the three used the automated defibrillator to shock him back to life before the paramedics arrived.

Flippin’s daughter Lucy Johnston spoke of how stunned the doctors were that the women were able to save him: “They were in shock. They were walking around showing each other the papers from the defibrillator, and saying ‘I can’t believe this, he’s so lucky, you’ve got to thank whoever helped him’.”

“It’s great that it had that kind of an outcome, but I just feel like there were guardian angels all over,” Crabtree said.

To Flippin’s family, the real guardian angels are the women who saved his life.

“They’re angels. They were there at the perfect time to help our family,” Flippin’s wife Paula said. “There could not have been more perfect timing.”

Now, Flippin can run a few more marathons, adding to his massive wall collection. But most importantly, he can spend another Thanksgiving with his family.

“You can’t be more thankful than that, when you think there would’ve been an empty seat at the table. And now there’s not going to be one, thanks to those three women,” Paula added.

“It’s a true miracle, that’s the word for my dad. He’s a walking miracle,” Johnston said.

“I’m just grateful to be alive,” Flippin said.

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According to witnesses’ accounts, the man staggered to shore with his longboard about 1:40 p.m., threw the board down and collapsed, landing on his back while not quite out of the water.

Darren and Joy Mettler of San Clemente said they were on the beach, heard the surfboard hit, realized something was wrong and ran to help. Bob Frazer, a general contractor working on a house atop the bluff, saw the man stagger and fall, called 911 and shouted for others below to help.

The Mettlers described the surfer as pale and unresponsive. His lips were blue, they said.

Others arrived to help – at first trying what Darren Mettler called “untrained CPR” as it seemed the only option. Others arrived who were able to do proper CPR. A lifeguard in Tower Zero on the San Clemente Pier saw people gathering on the shore at T-Street and sent help just as the call arrived from the county via 911.

Lifeguards pulled up and were “amazing,” Mettler said.

Marine Safety officers Nick Giugni and Blake Anderson and lifeguard Allan Bayer applied CPR and used an automated external defibrillator donated by Helena Jacobson’s Ray of Life Foundation.

The AED “is probably what saved his life,” Anderson said. He also praised the efforts of the beachgoers who rushed to assist.

Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills today confirmed the patient’s identity as Jay Campbell, 52, of Foothill Ranch. He was listed in stable condition, under intensive care. He had first been taken to Saddleback Memorial’s San Clemente campus, then transferred. The Mettlers, concerned about him, followed him as did Sarah Gicalone of San Clemente, who had assisted with CPR at the beach.

“We all did quite a bit of praying for him on the beach,” Gicalone said. “Surfers here are like a family. We do what we can do.”

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Town resident Russell Sirman had been doing sit-ups when he heard a thud behind him, by the treadmills. It didn’t register at first — then came “an odd sound, like someone snoring away,” recalled Sirman, 46, a teacher at Classical Magnet School in Hartford.

“Sir, are you all right?” he asked Leach. Within moments of the initial thud, Sirman ran to the lifeguards standing near one of the center’s pools.

The Saviour Lifeguards

“It only takes a half-second between seeing him coming and knowing whether it’s going to be a serious problem,” Allison said.

The night before, Allison had grumbled to pals about his “uneventful” life. He graduated from the University of Connecticut a few months ago as a history major, and didn’t think he’d be back at Cornerstone, a town-owned swimming center operated by the company Aquatics for Life. In his six years as a part-time lifeguard, Allison told his friends, “I’ve never even had to pull someone out of the water.”

But now Allison and Hatton, 19, were beside the unconscious man, a West Hartford resident and Cornerstone regular who had been running the treadmills three times a week for the past seven years to strengthen his heart.

Somehow, Leach became lodged between an elliptical machine and a treadmill after his collapse.

“That was a bit of a curveball,” said Hatton, of Farmington, who had only been on the job for several months.

Hatton radioed for the front desk to call 911. Not long afterward, Dan Stowe walked past the desk on his way to give private lessons at one of the pools. Stowe, a 28-year-old veteran lifeguard from South Windsor, ran to the fitness room. Allison, Hatton and Sirman had already pushed the exercise machines apart and pulled Leach to the center of the room.

As the younger lifeguards checked for vital signs, Stowe ran to get the automatic defibrillator stationed about 40 feet away.

Allison and Hatton were initially wary of moving Leach in case he had a spinal injury from the fall. But his face was turning a deeper blue, and his hoarse breathing sounded as though it would cease in a matter of seconds.

The two began a round of CPR — Hatton gave roughly 30 chest compressions and Allison attempted to give two rescue breaths — as Stowe returned with the defibrillator less than two minutes after Leach’s collapse. To prepare for the defibrillator, Hatton cut open Leach’s shirt.

That’s when they saw the long scar down Leach’s sternum. The college professor had undergone major heart bypass surgery 10 years ago.

His rescuers now presumed he had experienced either a heart attack — when one or more of the arteries is blocked — or cardiac arrest, a different event in which the heart abruptly stops beating and blood pressure drops to nothing, halting blood circulation and oxygen to the brain and other organs. Ventricular fibrillation, when a heart rhythm suddenly becomes uneven and chaotic, typically causes cardiac arrest.

Those with a history of coronary disease are more likely to be stricken.

“I had very, very little expectation of him surviving this,” Allison said.

Stowe has been a lifeguard for 10 years, but never had to resuscitate a victim until Sept. 16.

The AED instructed him to administer the electric current. “I hit the button,” Stowe said; Leach’s body appeared to jolt. “After the shock, you could actually see color going back to his face.

“This individual, Eugene, was definitely a fighter, because he was struggling,” Stowe said, “and he kept struggling.”

The electric current reorganized Leach’s heart rhythm enough to keep him faintly breathing. Hatton continued chest compressions as Allison and Stowe attempted to give rescue breaths.

“Four minutes, three seconds after the call came in, we were on scene and paramedics were behind us,” Allyn said.

The emergency medical technicians took over and injected Leach with heart stimulants, intubated him to open his airway, and shocked him four times with their own defibrillator before rushing him to the University of Connecticut’s John Dempsey Hospital.

The morning Leach was eased back into consciousness, he began reading The New York Times.

Six days after the collapse, Leach was released from the hospital with full neurological recovery and an internal defibrillator installed in his chest.

Leach remembered running on the Cornerstone treadmill, engrossed in an audio book of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” streaming through his earbuds.

“A really beautiful reading of a great novel, and I was having a great time,” Leach said from his West Hartford home. “Then I fell over like a tree.”

The professor is taking it easy now. The five days after the cardiac arrest are lost somewhere in his memory, but he is gaining strength and has shed at least a dozen pounds.

He goes for walks with his Labrador retriever, Melanie, in their Beverly Road neighborhood. Although on medical leave from Trinity, he has resumed his detailed, written critiques of master’s theses, and has returned to his own book project on Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and the American dream.

About a week ago, Leach and his wife, Kathy Frederick, met Allison, Hatton and Stowe in the Cornerstone lobby and gave each an iPod Nano, colored red for the heart, as a small token of their thanks.

“No band, no banner,” Leach said. “They didn’t make speeches. They assured us that they did what they were trained to do.”

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He was literally surrounded by Glenview Park District staff all trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use of an automated external defibrillator (AED).

A passerby, Ben Jaremus, who happened to be a retired firefighter/paramedic, saw the man collapse around 6:50 p.m. Tuesday near his car. The man was not breathing and did not have a pulse, he said.

Calls for assistance brought Park Center Facilities Manager Kathleen McInnis, who happened to be working late, and eight Splash Landings lifeguards.

It happened during shift change for the lifeguards at the Park Center’s indoor pool, Kolk said, so those going off duty and those coming on duty were all present.

When a Glenview Fire Department ambulance arrived at the center, 2400 Chestnut Ave., they found Jaremus and the lifeguards performing CPR on the man, after having used an AED to recover his pulse.

The victim was transported to Glenbrook Hospital.

“It all comes down to no more than training,” Kolk said. “We’re constantly training on everything and CPR is something lifeguard staff goes over and over and over again on a weekly basis. Other staff through our buildings and facilities go through annual training.”

This was the second time in two years that Park District staff used an AED to revive a patron who suffered a heart attack.

The last time, a 90-year-old man in the fitness center was attended to by fitness center staff. When paramedics arrived, he was conscious and alert.

Const. Robin Chiasson the Saviour

When Chiasson reached the woman and did a primary assessment there were no vital signs. Instinctively, she began CPR, compressing the woman’s chest while lifeguards went to get breathing apparatus.

“The lifeguards were really prompt in getting the mask they needed and that helped a lot,” she says.

Chiasson worked with the lifeguards to revive the woman until paramedics, firefighters and police arrived.

The woman – in her early 60s – was taken to Royal Victoria Hospital where she remains in serious condition, “but,” adds the young officer, “she’s still here fighting!”

Last November, the mother of three, and constable Peter Hunter of the Southern Georgian Bay OPP detachment, used a school’s AED (automated external defibrillator) and CPR to help revive a 13-year-old boy who was not exhibiting any vital signs after collapsing at James Keating Public School in Penetanguishene.

“I’m beginning to think I need an AED (automated external defibrillator) with me at all times,” she said.

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Paramedic spokesman Supt. Darrell Drew said lifeguards at the Ottawa Athletic Centre on Lancaster Road initiated CPR and shocked the man with a defibrillator. Ottawa Fire Service assisted with CPR until paramedics arrived and put the man on advanced cardiac life support.

The man’s pulse had returned by the time he was transported to hospital, Drew said.