First Aid Corps

Virgil Bramblett had just arrived at Hickman High School on Nov. 17 to help repair the school stage. For four hours that morning, the Columbia Public Schools carpenter had felt an uneasy pain in his chest. Muscles near his heart were sore, he thought.

Virgil Bramblett the Survivor

So he walked to the school nurse’s office — on the northeast side of Hickman — a five-minute walk from the school’s main office, where the automatic external defibrillator, or AED, rests.

At about 7:15 a.m. that day, the school’s licensed practical nurse, Cara Baker, had just arrived at work. She led Bramblett to a cot in the nurse’s office. Bramblett asked her to take his blood pressure because of chest pains.

After the blood-pressure reading, Bramblett popped up from the cot, ready to go to work. On his feet, though, he felt dizzy. Seconds later, he was on the cot again, unconscious. Evans and Baker moved him to the floor and began CPR, and Evans shouted at Lisa Chalupny, the office secretary, to call 911.

Do you need the AED?” Chalupny asked, referring to the defibrillator.

“Yes!” Evans replied.

Assistant Principal Tracey Conrad was standing near a stairway in the Hickman Commons when she heard home-school communicator Talisha Payne’s voice on the walkie-talkie asking for the AED.

Conrad sprinted toward the box on the wall containing the defibrillator. School office worker Theodore Hanfelder already had the machine and handed it to Conrad, who dashed to the nurses’ office.

When Conrad reached the office, Evans grabbed the AED as Baker continued CPR.

The AED showed Bramblett’s heartbeat was irregular and that he was having his fifth heart attack. The machine advised Evans to send an electrical shock into him. She pushed the button.

After the AED shock in the nurse’s office, Bramblett seemed to stabilize. The nurses said he even spoke to them.

“I’m so sorry,” he told them. “Thank you so much.”

Evans told him emergency crews were coming. “Oh, I gotta get back to work,” the nurses said he told them.

Bramblett was released from the hospital Nov. 19 and advised to not work for at least a month.

Brenda Bramblett remains anxious about her husband’s health. “It’s just really scary when he leaves the house every day,” she said.

They’re just three big words – Automated Electronic Defibrillator – but for 16-year-old Zachary Harper and his family, they’re words to live by.

Zachary Harper (2nd from left) the Survivor

On an otherwise routine school day last month, Harper, a junior, was minding the school store with a couple of friends when he suddenly grew light-headed.

Seconds after he staggered to teacher Dana Bourassa’s classroom to get a pass for the nurse, it was lights out.

“That’s the last thing I remember,” the slim, black-haired teen said this week at home, where he and his family gathered to piece together the seconds and minutes that, had it not been for nurse Mary Arrowsmith, assistant principal Diane Doran, and teachers Bourassa and Jim St. Onge, would almost certainly have been his last.

Craven said that although Arrowsmith restored Harper’s heartbeat with the AED “in about a minute,” the teen wasn’t yet out of the woods. “He was lost again in the hallway, and there were about four more life-saving maneuvers that were performed on the way to the hospital,” Craven said.

Harper was first rushed to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, then flown – in 16 minutes, according to mom Deb Harper, who accompanied him – to Children’s Hospital Boston.

A lot of things went through his head as he lay at Children’s Hospital Boston recovering, Harper said. One vow he made, for instance, was to swear off of junk food forever.

“Well, I guess that’s been broken a little bit since I got home,” he said Monday with a sheepish grin.

Const. Robin Chiasson — a former nurse — responded to a call at James Keating Public School to find school staff attempting CPR to revive the student.

Brandon Koskitalo the Survivor

Vice-principal Sarah Knight said students who had been playing with the boy rushed to the office to alert her after he collapsed.

“I asked the secretary to call 911, grabbed the automated external defibrillator (AED) and headed to the school yard with Shirley Taylor Banks, a board employee who is a registered nurse.

“We were joined by Arlene Spiess, an educational assistant. The officer was there within a minute of us starting procedures and took over.”

She and Const. Peter Hunter, who arrived seconds later, took over administering CPR and Chiasson used the chool’s automated external defibrillator to test the boy’s heart.

The machine indicated she should deliver an electric shock, then resume CPR, which she did, while Hunter assisted with restoring the boy’s breathing.

“As we continued the CPR, I could feel his heart suddenly start pounding and he began breathing,” Chiasson said.

Brandon Koskitalo, 13, was rushed to a hospital in Midland and transferred by air ambulance to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The boy reportedly had a history of cardiac illness.

Knight said yesterday that the student was in stable condition and that his family was with him.

Chiasson — who has three children — said there was “a moment when I envisaged this being my own child . . . you have the will that tells you not to give up; you do what you have to do.”

Chiasson said it was “amazing how the community came together as team. It was the most positive outcome we could hope for.”

Brandon, who underwent surgery to have an internal circadian pacemaker (ICP) placed in his chest in order to prevent a reoccurrence, said the incident let him know how severe his heart condition truly is.

“I hope that they put the AEDs in all the other schools because it can happen to anyone – parents, teachers, students.”

“Words are just not enough…. I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I am only here because (these people) did what they were supposed to do correctly. I am lucky to be here.”

Richmond went to Bon Lin Middle School on Aug. 18 to check out his kids for an orthodontist appointment.

Kenneth Richmond the Survivor

He was chatting with the front office staff at about 3 p.m. and had written his first name on the sign-out sheet when the 41-year-old father collapsed in cardiac arrest.

With ink pen still in hand, Richmond slammed onto the tile floor, landing on his back, unconscious.

Also in the office that afternoon was cardiac nurse Dawn Graves, who was there to check out her son for a medical appointment. If she hadn’t sent him back to his classroom to get his backpack that he forgot, they would have been gone when Richmond collapsed.

“I just heard him hit the floor,” said Graves, a nurse at Methodist North Hospital.

She quickly dropped to his side and rubbed his chest and patted his face. His eyes were open and he was breathing, but he was out of it. He was sweating heavily.

She started performing CPR as an office staff member called 911. Assistant principal Jeremy Yow, also trained in CPR, quickly grabbed the defibrillator the school received last year.

They calmly followed the instructions on the device, alternating between electrical shocks through pads on Richmond’s chest and CPR.

Bartlett Fire paramedics arrived within three minutes and gave Richmond additional shocks on the way to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis.

“I like saying that the Lord put everything in place for me to still be here,” Richmond said Monday, recovering in his Arlington home.

Richmond said he’d been to a heart doctor recently because he was having irregular heartbeats and was scheduled to see a rhythm specialist two days after he collapsed.

“If they didn’t have the AED to shock me, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Richmond said.

Serbrina Richmond, the firefighter’s wife, said she’s grateful that she made that orthodontist appointment for her kids, who usually ride the bus home from school.

Had she not, daughter Kennedy, 13, and son Kenny, 11, would’ve likely found their father passed out.

It was like angels watching over my husband,” she said. “He is a living miracle.”

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

Nanette Hagen the Saviour

At about 11:30 a.m. Friday, one of the school’s secretaries notified St. Helens High School principal Nanette Hagen that a man was out in front of the school asking for help for his friend who was having a heart attack. The men had driven up to the school and parked in the fire lane in search of aid.

“I got his feet up here and I was immediately down on my knees. Felt for a pulse and checked for breathing and started chest compressions immediately,” says Hagen.

The high school principal immediately sent a couple of students inside to have someone bring out the school’s automatic defibrillator.

With the help of a fellow staff member, a retired firefighter, they followed the machines directions. When the defibrillator indicated the man needed an electric shock to keep his heart pumping, Hagen didn’t hesitate.

She then continued chest compressions until paramedics arrived.

“At the time, I just responded,” she said.

Hagen’s actions sustained the man’s life long enough for him to get to Good Samaritan Hospital.

“I sure wish I knew what the outcome was,” Hagen said.

Although the administrator shies away from the word hero, she is glad she was able to help the man as best as she could.

“It’s nice to know people think we have trained folks here,” Hagen said.

The school has multiple people trained to do exactly what Hagen did: an emergency response team that includes multiple teachers and classified staff. Glen Boles, a member of the team and a campus monitor, helped Hagen administer the defibrillator.

“We can say we did absolutely everything we could,” Hagen said.

Updates

It would be days before she’d receive confirmation of her success.

A phone call from a family member of the victim brought her to tears.

“She said he made it. He’s still having a little bit of issues, but he made it. I just started crying.”