First Aid Corps

Six women entered the pool for the women’s 100 yard breaststroke at the Florida Senior Games.

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.”

Crawford Best, 72, a professional bassoonist, lifelong runner and peak-bagger, survived an unexpected heart attack that struck while he was in the Glenwood Hot Springs Pool, thanks to quick work by pool lifeguards with CPR and a defibrillator, followed by expert care at Valley View and St. Mary’s hospitals.

View First Aid Corps World Map of AED Locations in a larger map

“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.

Julianna Marquez, 9, knew something was wrong. It was late afternoon on a hot June day, and no one else — not even the adults — seemed to notice the little boy face-down on the bottom of the apartment complex swimming pool.

Julianna Marquez the Saviour with Quamir Cooper the Survivor

Julianna, a third-grader with wavy brown hair, was nearby in the water. She swam beneath the surface and pulled 4-year-old Quamir Cooper to the pool’s edge.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Julianna said Tuesday. “I was just like, ‘OK, I’m just going to grab him.’ ”

Julianna’s heroism was recognized in a poolside ceremony Tuesday after Roanoke County officials said she helped save Quamir from drowning at the pool of the Villages at Garst Creek in Roanoke County.

The police officers, paramedics and good Samaritans who helped gathered for the ceremony, where they recounted the drama that unfolded June 1.

Sheena Rosser, Quamir’s mother, was arriving at the apartment complex pool with Quamir and her daughter, Alaejah. The pool isn’t staffed by a lifeguard, and as she ran back to her car to grab pool towels, Rosser lost sight of the young boy.

Quamir floated briefly before sinking to the bottom of the pool’s 5-foot deep end.

Nearby, Julianna noticed Quamir hadn’t resurfaced.

Without hesitation, Julianna said, she swam to the bottom of the pool. She opened her eyes underwater and could see that Quamir wasn’t moving.

Julianna grabbed hold of Quamir’s tiny frame and lifted him to the surface. By then, adults took note of the struggle and helped lift the boy onto the concrete pool deck. His body was limp and showed no signs of life.

Timothy Tilley, sitting nearby with his children, rushed over.

“There was a panic, and I come over to see what was going on,” said Tilley, 30. “We realized the boy wasn’t breathing, so I felt like, you know, we was wasting time.”

Inside the apartment management office, Roanoke County police Officer Bobby Zizelman, 30, was wrapping up an unrelated call to settle a disturbance that had brought him and other officers to the complex.

“I heard a bunch of screams coming from the pool area,” Zizelman said. He ran outside and saw a group of people standing around Quamir.

As Zizelman radioed for an ambulance, Officer Darin Hogan, 42, ran from his car in the parking lot. He approached the unconscious Quamir and couldn’t find a pulse.

The boy was dying.

Sgt. Jay Matze, a 14-year Roanoke County police veteran, was leaving the complex from the disturbance call and heard Zizelman’s urgent radio call for help. He quickly turned around.

“By the time I got to the pool, I saw Quamir laying here on the deck,” Matze said. Tilley “was already at his head. I just came around and between the two of us, we started doing CPR.”

For three minutes, Tilley and Matze, 47, worked together to save Quamir’s life: Tilley issuing breaths through Quamir’s mouth, and Matze performing compressions on the boy’s torso.

“The thought never crossed my mind that he wasn’t going to come out of it,” Matze said.

Quamir tried to breathe, but started choking. Matze and other officers gripped him in the Heimlich maneuver and cleared his airway.

Life soon returned to the boy’s body and he began coughing up water. By the time a Roanoke County Fire and Rescue Department crew arrived a few minutes later, Quamir was crying and asking for his mother.

Quamir was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he stayed for two days. Tuesday was the first time Quamir and his mother had seen the rescuers since the event.

Following the ceremony, Julianna hugged Quamir and asked if he was OK. The shy boy turned away from her — and the television and newspaper cameras — but offered up a smile across his mother’s arms.

“I owe my life to her,” Rosser said of the 9-year-old rescuer. “I would do anything for her. If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be here.”

Wednesday’s ceremony at the pool was attended by Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder, among other officials.

The officers who responded presented Julianna and Tilley with awards for their actions.

“In a day and age when nobody wants to help each other, this little girl and this guy … just hopped down there and no questions asked started giving CPR,” Zizelman said.

Matze, who said he has young children of his own, hugged Quamir and presented him with an honorary SWAT challenge coin, a police token that signifies participation in the elite group.

“When you grow up, you gotta do something nice for someone, OK?” Matze told him. “And when you grow up and you see me some day, you come find me, and you shake my hand.”

Connie Hall-Burke, a nurse at Mercy Memorial Hospital in Monroe, and her husband, Kevin Burke, a former firefighter in Woodhaven and Brownstown Township, were walking in front of 2-year-old girl Madison’s house at the moment her mother rushed out screaming at them, asking if they knew CPR.

“What she said was so chilling,” Connie said. “She said her baby fell in the pool and she’s not breathing.”

Connie and her husband ran into the house past nine other children. She recalled the “look of horror” on the faces of everyone as she was handed the lifeless child by one of the home’s residents.

“It didn’t feel like she was alive,” Connie said. “There was no pulse and she was a steel blue and getting darker. She was soaking wet.”

Connie started rescue breaths, but it didn’t take long for Kevin to realize they were not working.

He started doing back blows and water started spewing out of the girl’s mouth, but she still was not responding.

As everyone around them was in a panic, Connie said she was hoping she was doing all the right things to save the girl’s life.

Kevin put his hands around Madison’s rib cage and Connie cleaned her nose and mouth to clear her airway. He began doing compressions.

“I could hear everyone in the background just screaming and praying,” Connie said. “I’ll never forget the feeling of her in my arms. Then, her mother leaned over and said, ‘Madison, you come back right now.’”

After about 90 seconds of compressions, Madison let out “a thrust of cries.”

“At that moment, for the first time, I thought we were winning,” Connie said. “I thought we had snatched her (from death). But, she went right back to having no response.”

Connie told Madison’s mother to keep touching her, that the little girl knew she was there.

Connie said that when police officers arrived, they immediately recognized the gravity of the situation.

Connie and Kevin said all they had to work with was the family’s kitchen table, and Madison needed a whole lot more than that. She said emergency personnel “scooped her up and ran.”

Once Madison was taken away, the couple found themselves standing in a stranger’s kitchen having just dealt with the enormity of a life-and-death situation.

“All I knew was that the little girl’s name is Madison,” Connie said. “Kevin and I both cried pretty hard in the front yard. We didn’t have the feeling that she was going to live. We just walked back home and didn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Connie and Kevin had such an emotional investment in the girl that they couldn’t stand not knowing the status of her condition.

The couple called a friend in the nursing field for help and received an email at about midnight that there was no word on Madison’s condition.

However, they were able to get their telephone number passed along to Madison’s parents.

Connie and Kevin eventually got what they were hoping for — a message from Madison’s father.

“He called me and left a beautiful message,” Connie said.

Madison has since been released from a hospital and has made a full recovery.

About a week after her release, Connie and Kevin had a private reunion under much happier circumstances with Madison and her parents.

The reunion was emotional for everyone.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” Connie said. “Now she gets to go to kindergarten and do other things.”

They believe that Madison has “awesome, loving parents” and simply called the circumstances an accident. Nevertheless, they view this “traumatic experience” as a teachable moment for other parents.

Connie said it is important for all parents to know CPR, especially if there is a pool and children are around.

Connie and Kevin have been married for 27 years and have four children. They also have a 2-year-old grandson.

The two credit each other for being the “hero.”

That day — May 22 — will forever be significant in their lives and they couldn’t be happier that their neighborhood walk took a turn that helped save a life.

A 9-year-old boy saved the life of his 2-year-old sister Sunday after she had fallen into their grandparents’ Mesa pool, fire officials said.

The little girl and her family had traveled from Las Vegas to visit their grandparents’ home in the 2600 block of South Athena, said Capt. Forrest Smith, a Mesa Fire Department spokesman.

The toddler somehow got into the pool, and for a few moments, the family didn’t know where she was. The mother spotted her on the pool’s surface and pulled her out. Her son began performing CPR on his sister, Smith said.

“He said he learned it from watching TV,” Smith said.

The boy saved his sister’s life, Smith said.

Neighbors said they heard screaming after the child was pulled from the pool and gathered to try to help. One of the neighbors, Kassie Ketring, 23, is a certified lifeguard. She said the child was breathing by the time she arrived in the yard.

“I got down on the child’s level and checked the airway, checked the breathing,” Ketring said. “I noticed she was breathing, so I just kept the airway open. I kept hearing the other child (the brother) saying, ‘You can’t die on me.’ It just sticks in my head, hearing that.”

On the way to the hospital, the toddler “started regaining her ability to breathe and started to cry,” Smith said.