First Aid Corps

At 10:10 a.m. Thursday, an 80-year-old Owego man and his wife were walking on the Rail Trail when the man experienced heart trouble and fell.

Sue Driver, an employee of Catalyst Manufacturing alongside the trail, saw the incident and immediately ran over.

She began CPR and was aided by town Parks Director James Bukowski, who also witnessed the incident from the Coal House, which the town is renovating.

Despite their efforts, the two were unable to revive the man, who wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.

Police officer William Serkiz arrived with a defibrillator and shocked the man.

The victim’s heartbeat resumed and he was able to breathe on his own.

“The machine was working very well,” Butler said.

After the incident, Serkiz talked on the phone with the man, who had been taken to Wilson Regional Medical Center in Johnson City.

At 11:15 a.m. Monday morning, Aug. 10, Rocky Mountain National Park dispatch received a call from a family member of a 73-year-old man who was suffering from a possible heart attack on the Flattop Mountain Trail in the Bear Lake area.

He had briefly lost consciousness.

The patient was about two miles, at an elevation gain of 1,400 feet (10,875 feet), from the trailhead. A team of two rangers reached the trailhead at 11:44 a.m. and were on scene with the patient in less than 30 minutes.

The rangers brought an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and provided immediate care, including additional oxygen.

At 1:13 p.m. the patient went into cardiac arrest.

CPR was initiated and when the patient displayed a shockable rhythm, the AED was activated and the patient’s pulse was restored.

The patient soon regained consciousness.

A paramedic from Estes Park Medical Center arrived on scene shortly thereafter.

The patient was secured in a wheeled litter and the team began bringing him down the trail at 1:26 p.m.

He reached the trailhead at 2 p.m. and was placed in an Estes Park Medical Center ambulance, which transported him to a landing zone at Glacier Basin Campground.

At 2:26 p.m. North Colorado Med Evac flew the patient to Medical Center of the Rockies.

The social worker and mother of three had dropped off her two oldest children at a swim team practice about 9:30 a.m. June 29. She then headed for a rejuvenating run along a forest preserve path with her 13-month-old daughter, Tess, in a jogging stroller.

“I had passed another woman at one point, and we gave each other a nod,” McElligot recalled about a runner headed in the opposite direction.

“As I was coming back from the end of the trail at 17th Avenue, I came to a clearing, and she was stretched out in the middle of the trail. I was giving my daughter a drink, and then I thought something didn’t look right.”

McElligot said as she got closer, she realized the woman wasn’t breathing at all. A nearby resident had called 911, and another woman was helping the runner.

“She was cold and blue,” said McElligot, who immediately began performing chest compressions. “She would take gasps every once in a while, but then after a while, she was not taking gasps any more.”

McElligot started mouth-to mouth resuscitation, and soon a police officer arrived. He set up a portable automated external defibrillator and administered the first burst of power to shock the woman’s heart back to beating.

The electronic life-saving device for heart attack victims gave instructions aloud, and McElligot assisted the police officer. She soon was replaced by paramedics who arrived and took over.

“Once I stopped doing things and was just a bystander, I got really anxious,” McElligot admitted. “Once the paramedics got there, I started crying.”

“I didn’t even think about Tess that entire time, which was only about five minutes. She just sat there the whole time and didn’t make a peep. She was smiling at me.”

McElligot said she was glad to learn later that the woman, who looked to be physically fit and in her mid-40s, recovered after she was taken for emergency treatment to Loyola Medical Center.

“I was glad to be at the right place at the right time,” McElligot said.

The unidentified woman, an Arizona tourist in her 50s, was walking to the Taste when she collapsed near Balbo and Columbus around 10:30 a.m., Chicago Fire Department officials said.

A good samaritan on her bicycle spotted the woman and began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Michael Geurin & Elvis Falbo the Saviours

Shortly after, fire department paramedics Michael Guerin and Elvis Falbo arrived on their bikes in response to a 911 call.

The injured woman didn’t have a pulse and was not breathing, but the paramedics were able to shock her heart back into a normal rhythm with an automated external defibrillator from one of their bikes.

“As soon as we shocked her, we got a pulse back,” Guerin said. “I’ve been a paramedic for 15 years, and this is the first time I’ve defibrillated someone and had them wake up and start talking.”

Guerin said the first words she spoke were, “Where am I?”

The woman was taken to a waiting ambulance by a medical cart and then to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she is said to be in serious but stable condition, officials said.

“You can’t beat them. They’re just invaluable,” he said of the team, which is also used to patrol busy downtown areas.

Guerin and Falbo thanked the samaritan, who appeared to have some form of medical training. “It definitely helped. I don’t know if it greatly changed the outcome,” said Falbo.

“Nothing can be more rewarding than saving somebody’s life,” said Falbo, a paramedic for 11 years. “I’m just glad we were there.”

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Suffolk County police say the 37-year-old had no pulse when they were called to help him at about 6:40 p.m. Sunday at Mill Dam Park in Huntington.

Officers Ryan West, Timothy Tonkin, Anthony Iadevaio and Robert Musial used a defibrillator and performed CPR, with help from Huntington Community First Aid Squad volunteer Chris Winter.

The man began breathing on his own and was taken to Huntington Hospital.

No update on his condition was immediately available late Sunday.

It isn’t clear why he collapsed.

Suffolk police patrol cars are generally equipped with defibrillators.