First Aid Corps

Fortunately for Catskill resident James Brennan of Hudson Avenue, it took less than four minutes for emergency responders to arrive after his collapse.

EMTs Rob, Michael & Cory the Saviours

At 6:10 p.m., Brennan’s wife called 911, reaching Catskill Police Department dispatcher Erika Ruger, and Catskill Police Officer Steven Deitz was dispatched to the residence at 6:12 p.m. and began CPR by 6:14 p.m.

Catskill Ambulance Emergency Medical Technician Cory Birk, who was off-duty and visiting a friend only a block away on High Street, overheard the radio communications on his friend’s police scanner and responded to the scene.

He quickly utilized the Automatic Electronic Defibrillator, which each Catskill Police patrol car equips, and was able to revive Brennan, who is in his 60s, according to EMTs.

“When someone puts their professional responsibilities beyond their own personal needs, it is beyond invaluable when it comes to saving someone’s life,” said Town Supervisor Peter Markou, who commended Birk with the first-ever citation for outstanding performance by a first responder.

Catskill EMT Michael Eisshofer of East Greenbush and EMT-Intermediate Rob Brooks of Purling were also commended by the board for their service in the incident.

Eisshofer and Brooks responded and performed further CPR to stabilize Brennan.

“He was touch and go for a while there,” said Brooks, who noted he became unresponsive during treatment.

“If we weren’t there for another two minutes,” Brooks said, “he wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“A life was saved because of their service,” Markou said of the responders.

“I just did my job,” said Birk.

“They don’t feel that they’ve done anything special,” said Catskill Ambulance Administrator Matthew Leibowitz, “but of course, whenever you save a life it’s special.”

“This is what we do,” said Brooks. “It’s special in that there are not many situations where they are actually able to walk out of the hospital.”

47-year-old Jackie Shashaty suffered a heart attack around 11:30 p.m., on Saturday, Jan. 9, collapsed on her bedroom floor, and began to have a seizure.

Shashaty’s boyfriend, Cedar Grove Police Officer Scott Moody, was inside her house, heard the fall, and raced into the bedroom where he discovered Shashaty had no pulse.

Her heart had stopped beating.

Moody performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Shashaty, a mother of two, and called 911.

Moody also called Shashaty’s sister, Marge Quirk, a Jersey City school nurse, who lives just up the road from Shashaty.

Officers and emergency personnel responded to Shashaty’s Rugby Road home in a matter of minutes.

By the time she arrived on the scene, Quirk was watching members of Cedar Grove’s Ambulance and Rescue Squad shock Shashaty’s heart with a defibrillator.

“I knew she was not alive at that moment,” said Quirk.

Shashaty said her heart was shocked a total of six times by the defibrillator before it slowly began to beat and a faint pulse returned.

Cedar Grove Ambulance and Rescue Squad members transported Shashaty to Mountainside Hospital in Montclair.

A few days after having the implantation of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, Shashaty was released from the hospital. She is now recovering at her home along with the help of her two children.

Although she had a busy schedule on Jan. 9, Shashaty said she has no recollection of anything that occurred before or after the heart attack.

“I didn’t see anything,” said Shashaty after being revived. “I don’t have a recollection of anything.”

When asked if she had a message to the emergency personnel who helped resuscitate her, Shashaty said, “Thank you for saving my life. My kids still have their mom.”

Lewis Gooden was visiting friends on Old East Road on Dec. 4.

Karen & David Rodham the Saviours

After visiting and having a cup of tea with Karen and David Rodham, he got up to leave and suddenly collapsed, suffering from sudden cardiac arrest.

Mrs. Rodham said they were all standing together so her husband was able to catch Mr. Gooden before he hit the floor and she immediately called 911. “It was seconds that he could’ve been out the door,” she said.

The 911 operator in Laconia walked the couple through the new CPR format, keeping Mrs. Rodham calm on the phone. The operator had her count compressions out loud while Mr. Rodham actually performed the 600 chest compressions as directed. Then help started to arrive.

“Thank God for Rick, he came walking through the door right at 600,” Mrs. Rodham said. Officer Rick Grima of the Whitefield police used the AED (automated external defibrillator) from his cruiser and was able to successfully shock Mr. Gooden’s heart.

The officer, a former EMT himself, admitted it was the first time he’d ever had to shock anyone. “I guess you did a good job,” Mr. Gooden quipped, laughing as the two men spoke.

Mr. Roy said he doesn’t remember any of the events of Dec. 4, but he’s thankful for everyone who helped.

After being transported to Weeks Medical Center in Whitefield, he was flown to Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and now sports an internal defibrillator to regulate his heart.

Mr. Rodham applauded the efforts of both Lancaster and Whitefield EMS in saving his friend. Among the responders were experienced EMTs, teen Explorers and the Fire Chiefs themselves, all of who played a role in helping to keep Mr. Roy alive en route to the hospital.

Rob collapsed after going to bed early with flu-like symptoms at his home in Newport, Gwent.

Rob Waggett the Survivor

Two hours later Dianna heard him struggling for breath through a baby monitor she keeps on the upstairs landing and by the time she reached him Rob was taking his last breaths.

Dianna, 29, said: “I said my goodbyes and told him I loved him and then watched as he died in my arms.”

She dialled 999 and was told how to try to resuscitate him as an ambulance was alerted.

Dianna also shouted to next-door neighbour Gary Thompson who helped her desperately perform CPR for four minutes until the paramedics arrived.

They then used a defibrillator to shock Rob’s heart six times without success.

As the minutes clicked by they tried one last time — and he suddenly started breathing again.

He was then rushed to hospital where he was put into a medically-induced coma.

Doctors warned her that even if he pulled through it was likely he had suffered serious brain damage.

She said: “I started grieving because I thought there was no hope, I didn’t know what I was going to tell our two young sons.”

Three days later Rob shocked doctors when he opened his eyes — but he failed to recognise Dianna who was keeping a bedside vigil because his brain had been starved of oxygen.

But amazingly the next day he woke up and asked nurses: “What’s my wife doing sleeping on the floor?”

He gradually began to piece together his long-term memories and three days later was well enough to see his children, three-year-old Mylo and Koby, one.

Dianna said she will always be grateful to neighbour Mr Thompson and paramedics Dan Faulker, Alan Hodge and Gary Evans.

“I am so grateful that the paramedics carried on working on him.

“They didn’t just save Rob’s life, they’ve saved mine and the children’s as well.”

Rob said: “It hasn’t sunk in yet what has happened. I’m so thankful to hospital staff and everyone who helped.”

In August of last year, Durham police officer Gerry Elliott was directing game traffic in front of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

“I remember taking a step to walk out of the intersection and everything went white,” Elliott said.

He fell and a fellow officer caught him.

“He told me he rolled me over and when he rolled me over, my complexion was kind of grayish blue and my lips were dark blue,” Elliott recalled.

Elliott’s heart stopped beating.

An EMT grabbed an automatic external defibrillator (AED) from the park’s office, and shocked his heart back to life.

A quick response and the AED saved Elliott’s life.

“We call them idiot proof, I mean, they basically show you where to put the pads, you hit a button and step back and it tells you what to do next,” Elliott said.

“I used to believe in luck, but now I just believe that I’m really blessed. I really do,” he said.

McKee, 52, was at the airport Dec. 12 to meet his sister, who was flying in from Rochester, N.Y., for a holiday visit. McKee, who lives in Fredericksburg, is a sculptor and conservator of fine art and historic monuments, such as those along Monument Avenue.

He’d gone up the escalator into the atrium, near the security checkpoint for Concourse B, when he noticed the lights for Hudson News, a shop selling newspapers and magazines, snacks, and souvenirs.

“The lights went from white to red to black,” recalled McKee, who had no chest pains to foreshadow the heart attack he was having. “My last thought was, ‘I can’t handle this.’ I knew I was dropping.”

Business was slow at Hudson News, where Cagwin was working, and she had just mentioned to someone how boring Saturdays can be when she looked up from the sales counter to see McKee collapse.

She instinctively raced to McKee, maybe 20 yards away, and checked for breathing and a pulse. She found neither. He was, as Sheets would say later, “gone,” and the race was on not only to save him but to revive him before he suffered irreversible brain damage.

Cagwin opened the glass door to a defibrillator on the wall just above where McKee fell.

She had no training in using a defibrillator and knew cardiopulmonary resuscitation only from what she learned in high school gym class, but, she said, “I just knew I had to do something.”

She was joined by a woman on her way to catch a flight who said she worked in sports medicine, and the two of them followed the instructions on the defibrillator to apply the first shocks to McKee’s heart.

Another man stopped and began doing chest compressions. Several other passers-by stopped and helped.

Within a couple of minutes, several of the airport’s rescue workers — who happened to be downstairs and not in the firehouse a half-mile away because they were returning chairs and tables they had borrowed for a Christmas party — arrived and took over.

They shocked McKee’s heart three more times, continued to do vigorous chest compressions — McKee still has the sore ribs to prove it — and his pulse returned.

McKee, of course, remembers none of it. After blacking out, his next memory is of a shining white light, although it’s not what you might think. It was the dome light in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was going to be OK.

Cagwin has been drifting from job to job since high school, looking for a purposeful career to do for the rest of her life. What she did for McKee that day gave her a glimpse of her future. She is looking to enter nursing school.

“I never thought I’d be able to react that way in a situation like that, but now I know I can do it,” she told McKee. “Thank you for giving my life direction.”

McKee has wondered why things seemed to fall in place for him, but he brushes aside any suggestion that it has anything to do with him.

“I don’t feel like there’s anything special about my case,” he said, “aside from the special people around me when I dropped.”

Paul Chaisson, 52, of Halifax said he started to feel dizzy while skating across the ice a little after midnight on Jan. 20 at the Centennial Arena.

“I saw the lights were getting funny and I knew I was going down,” Chaisson said Monday. “So I braced myself for it, and that was it.”

A paramedic from the opposing team rushed to his side, as did his teammate, Dr. Kirk Magee, who happens to be an ER doctor.

“As I got closer, Ken said he wasn’t breathing,” Magee said. “So we turned him over, and we called for the defibrillator.”

The assistant manager rushed for the defibrillator that’s kept at the arena.

The arena manager gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while the experts did CPR and used the defibrillator.

Within minutes, they had a pulse.

Coming to, Chaisson still had his mind on the game.

“My teammates were all hovered around me and I wanted to get up right away. And the first thing I said to them [was]: ‘Did they call the game?’”

Chaisson plans to sit out the rest of the season will still be on the sidelines.

“As soon as I’m released from hospital, I’ll go back to the rink,” he said. And he doesn’t plan to stay away from playing hockey for too long.

“I can’t stay off the ice. It’s just in my blood,” he said, adding he loves “the camaraderie, the games, the fun, the exercise — the whole thing.”

Ryan Smith, 18, suffered a heart attack while at a local handball court in December.

His best friend proceeded to call 9-1-1.

A man apparently saw the incident transpire and rushed over to perform CPR on Smith before three EMTs arrived.

“If it wouldn’t have been for that person and the police officers and the people from the ambulance, then he would have had brain damage,” said Smith’s father, Nelson Arroyo.

Now, both Smith and his father want thank this Good Samaritan.

“He just came, did what he did and disappeared. Whoever he was, he saved my life. Thank you for that,” said Smith.

EMTs needed a defibrillator to start Smith’s heart.

“I’m happy this kid was able to make it through because of these two people before us, and we just showed up and did our job. That’s all we did,” said Chris Leavitt, an EMT with Patriot Ambulance.

Emergency medical workers were called to Alumni Soccer Field at Davidson College Saturday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. after a report that a youth-soccer official had collapsed during a game.

Davidson Fire Chief Jeff Almond said the man apparently had a heart attack and was not breathing.

As emergency personnel arrived, a doctor and a nurse who were attending the game were performing CPR on the man.

Emergency workers took over, continuing CPR.

They administered a shock using an automated defibrillator, and his heart returned to a normal rhythm, the chief said.

The man was taken by ambulance to Presbyterian Hospital in Huntersville, where he was treated briefly. He was then taken on to Presbyterian Hospital’s main location in Charlotte for further treatment.

Beyond that, his condition was not known late Saturday afternoon.

It was near the end of the final hockey game of the season for a group of Nanaimo oldtimers hockey players and one that would forever change the life of Paul Walters.

The 52-year-old harbour patrol captain had enjoyed the sport for four decades and was nearing the end of the Dec. 21 matchup when he felt an intense pain in his chest that he thought might be attributed to his asthma.

Walters recalls lacking the classic heart attack symptoms, such as shooting pain down an arm or chest and told his team he was packing in for the night when he felt sick.

His chest pain intensified and as he changed in the dressing room, he told someone to grab fellow player Dave Sheepwash, an off-duty paramedic also trained in advanced life support.

Sheepwash asked someone to call 911 just as Walters collapsed and stopped breathing.

Sheepwash and players Jeff Braun and Pat O’Dwyer took turns administering CPR and used the AED ( automated external defibrillator ) which was available at the Nanaimo Ice Centre which was fitted in late 2008, as they waited for paramedics.

It took five hours to stabilize Walters, who was transported to a Victoria hospital where he learned an artery was badly blocked. After surgery he was moved back to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and released on Boxing Day. He will continue his recovery at home.

It is a happy Christmas story for Walters but the incident has given life a new meaning for the active father, who only three weeks earlier had received a good bill of health after a routine physical.

“My thoughts are now to take fitness more seriously,” said Walters on Saturday. “You get your life back and you find out you have so many friends. I’m very humbled by the reaction I’ve had.”