First Aid Corps

Gary Burnham, 52, of White River Junction, collapsed from cardiac arrest while finishing his workout on a treadmill at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center fitness club.

Employees reacted quickly, calling 9-1-1 and administering CPR, according to Tim Rollings, executive director of the center.

They also used another tool, an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

Burnham, who had no history of heart problems, spent nine days in an induced coma at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and spent another week there conscious and convalescing.

He has since returned to work for the U.S. Postal Service in White River Junction and said he will return to the UVAC as well after finishing his six-week hospital rehabilitation program.

“I know it saved his life,” said Debbie Burnham, Gary Burnham’s wife. “If they didn’t have the AED there, we were told he would not have lived.”

Gary Burnham had been trained in AED use as a baseball and basketball coach at Hartford Middle School and can attest to their ease.

“They’re not very difficult to operate,” he said. “I think it’s very important that they be available everywhere.”

But proper response in a crisis is crucial, and he credited UVAC with just that.

“I feel lucky I was there when it happened,” Burnham said. “There are a lot of good people that work there.”

A woman jogging alone through a quiet tree-lined neighborhood collapses, face-first, onto the ground.

Seeing the woman face-down in the grass, Blantz pulled a U-turn, jumped out of his car, found her unresponsive, called 911, rolled her on her back and began CPR.

Another jogger had stopped to help while Blantz was on the phone with emergency dispatchers. Blantz handed him the phone and began CPR.

He continued chest compressions as medics arrived less than a minute later and took over respiration.

The EMTs then used an automated external defibrillator to start the woman’s pulse again.

The jogger was taken to the hospital, where she remained unconscious — and unidentified — until Tuesday, when she awoke and was able to provide police with her mother’s name.

“I want her family to know,” Blantz said, “that individuals were there, that a complete stranger is willing to jump in and help at a moment’s notice and not expect anything from anybody.”

“I feel I did my duty in helping another citizen,” Blantz said.

About 1:15 on Sunday afternoon, several firefighters from Engine Company 35 in Harlem were parked at the corner of 124th Street and First Avenue during the New York City Marathon, when one noticed that a runner had collapsed, Lt. James Daley of Engine Company 35 said.

The firefighters weaved through the crowd of runners to the other side of the street, where they used a defibrillator to revive 51-year-old runner Michael Goulding of Fort Worth.

“It took about two or three minutes to get the heart beating,” Daley said in a telephone interview.

Daley said the firefighters were not assigned to monitor the marathon and were taking a break from their work.

“There weren’t any personnel from the marathon on that side of the street — it was just us,” he said.

Runners were stopped for a few seconds when the ambulance arrived to pick up Goulding, Daley said.

“By the time he was put into the ambulance, he was talking,” Daley recalled.

In a telephone interview, Goulding’s wife, Jan, said her husband had never run a marathon but had run a half-marathon. She said he did not have a heart condition and had recently lost several pounds.

“He called me from his cellphone at Mile 18 while he was running and said he was tired, but I bet they were all tired at that point,” Jan Goulding said. “The next thing I knew, he called me from the hospital.”

Cpl. James Streeter, 37, said he was at home cleaning around 9 a.m. when his doorbell rang. He opened the door to find Pastor Greg Ball’s wife Bobbie on his porch very upset. Streeter said he is friends with the couple and attends Destiny Church.

Bobbie Ball told Streeter that she and her husband had been jogging in their neighborhood when he suddenly collapsed. She said she knocked on the doors of several neighbors in an attempt to get help, but nobody was home.

That’s when she saw Streeter’s patrol car parked in his driveway and rang his doorbell.

Less than a mile into the run, Greg, who had turned 48 the day before, collapsed. “We usually jog to the left and this time we jogged to the right,” says Greg. “We made a jog around and from that moment on, I really didn’t remember anything that happened. My wife said I took off running, got about a hundred yards ahead of her, and just dropped.”

Streeter said he called Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s Communications Center and then drove a quarter of a mile to where Ball was on the ground.

Ball wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.

Streeter removed the AED from his patrol car, hooked it up to Ball and gave him one shock. Streeter then administered CPR until Ball started breathing on his own.

Paramedics arrived shortly after and transported Ball to a local hospital.

“The next thing I remember,” says Greg, “was waking up in the hospital and hearing the amazing story of what God did for my life.”

John Culshaw, aged 72, of Lakeside, has been running for the club since 1979 and was competing at an event in Nuneaton when he fell ill.

He had just finished sixth in the men’s over-50s speed walk when he collapsed and his heart stopped.

A fireman and doctor from a nearby club rushed to his aid and administered CPR before a defibrillator was fetched from Pingles Leisure Centre.

John told the Herald: “Basically, I’m lucky to be alive. Apparently the arteries to my heart were blocked. I was diagnosed with angina in 1997, but had no symptoms and it did not need treatment.”

The incident happened on August 12. John was rushed to Coventry’s University Hospital where he underwent a triple heart bypass.

He is now recovering at home, walking three miles a day and doctors say he should be back competing within four months.

He said: “My vest had to be cut from me when I collapsed, and the club have bought me a new one – so they are expecting me back!”

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.

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

Gwinn was running on the track at the University Recreation Center when he suffered a heart attack and dropped to the floor. Lucky for him, a nursing student was running behind him and administered CPR before an AED was used.

Gwinn says he owes everything to those students and the emergency responders who saved his life.

“I guess I just came around the corner and just dropped,” describes Gwinn.

“I had no idea I had anything wrong with me. Basically, I heard that she just saw me drop and started taking care of me right away. I haven’t seen her since, we have been in contact through e-mail, but I owe her my life.”

In reality, Gwinn has a rare heart condition called IHSS, which is a thickening of the heart wall.

She says, “He had a total of six people from UREC, both students and staff from the JMU Recreation Center, that responded immediately, and all of them were trained in CPR.”