First Aid Corps

Dr. Ross Bailey of Mantorville, a veterinarian with the Carriage House Animal Hospital in Kasson, had been on one of his daily jogs when the rhythm of his heart was interrupted.

He went into cardiac arrest, and Kim Thomas of Mantorville saw him collapse on the road.

As a surgical technologist at Olmsted Medical Center in Rochester, Thomas is required to be certified in CPR. She pulled over, called 911 and performed CPR until Dodge County sheriff’s deputy Scott Prins arrived.

“It felt like forever, those eight minutes between the call to 911 and hearing the sirens,” Thomas recalled Tuesday after receiving an award for her life-saving efforts.

“You don’t stop and make choices. You just do what you’ve been trained to do,” Thomas said. “I just clicked into CPR mode.”

Thomas’ efforts made it possible for Prins to treat Bailey at the scene with the automated external defibrillator in his squad car. It was the first time Prins had used the machine in the field.

After receiving the defibrillator shocks, Bailey regained a pulse and was taken to Saint Marys Hospital by Dodge Center ambulance.

“The whole series of events that weekend brought us all to the same place at the same time,” Thomas said. “I know we were all there for a good reason.”

Kathy Margiasso, the fitness director at Mount Kisco Athletic Club, and another personal trainer were waiting for their 9 a.m. appointments last week when a member came running toward them.

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“Someone fell off the treadmill,” Margiasso said was the urgent message.

Margiasso’s initial instinct was to grab the first aid kit, thinking it might be a case of scrapes and bruises, but then fellow trainer Val Yasovic told her the person was unconscious.

Kathy Margiasso the Saviour

Turns out a 64-year-old man had suffered a heart attack while working out on the treadmill. Margiasso said she quickly “turned back around,” and got the Automatic External Defibrillator, or AED, and told manager Tom Brady to call 911.

“Immediately what I did was just open the AED and put the pads on his chest, and the AED analyzed immediately and said there was a shock advised,” Margiasso said. “I did one shock and then we started CPR.”

Brady said Margiasso and Yasovic were in sync.

“She and Val worked as a team to save that guy’s life,” said Brady, noting that one trainer was operating the defibrillator and then together they did three cycles of CPR with Margiasso doing compressions and Yasovic the breaths.

Margiasso said the victim’s legs then started to move “and there were signs of life” so she stopped. By this point, police, EMTs and an ambulance had arrived at the 151 Kisco Ave. club

The club would not release the name of the member who was stricken but said he was stabilized at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco and then brought to the cardiac unit at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla where he underwent double bypass surgery the following day.

Margiasso said Tuesday she was proud of herself and the staff for remaining calm and grateful that everyone in the gym is trained to do CPR and use the AED. In fact, Margiasso is the one who trains them.

“I’m thrilled that when it comes time to put (to use) the skills that we practice over and over again, that we were able to do it,” she said.

Ben Parsons, 30, a full-time firefighter and paramedic for the Whitefish Fire Department, traveled to Blodgett, Ore., for the annual Test of Endurance race on Father’s Day.

He finished strong at the race (11th out of 240 racers on the 50-mile course with 8,200 feet of climbing) and was headed back to his truck to clean up when a friend noticed flames “licking up uncomfortably close” to the awning of a nearby home.

They quickly discovered a flaming barbecue grill sitting on a wood porch attached to the house.

“Unbelievably, there was no one home and no hoses in the yard,” Parsons recalled in a first-person account he wrote about the incident, so he told his friend to run up the street where a firefighter with the Blodgett Volunteer Fire Department was operating a tender for racers to clean up their bikes.

Parsons said he grudgingly called 911, “knowing that we’d most likely get this taken care of before another engine showed up.

Parsons, who still was unwinding from the grueling race, thought everything was under control when his friend called him over again, this time to the fire truck.

Parsons realized the firefighter had collapsed and was in cardiac arrest.

When he found the man had no pulse, he put his paramedic skills into play and asked his friend to make a second 911 call, this time with news that a firefighter had coded.

Parsons “cranked away” on CPR to resuscitate the man while the dispatcher on the 911 line kept asking questions.

Within a couple of minutes an elderly woman arrived on scene with an automated external defibrillator and an airway kit. It was the firefighter’s wife, Parsons soon realized.

He successfully resuscitated the man, had him take some aspirin and made sure the firefighter had stable vitals before handing him off as the medics showed up.

The Blodgett firefighter underwent surgery that night. He called Parsons three days ago to thank him for his help, and informed him he’d had bypass surgery and now has a pacemaker and defibrillator.

On a warm April day, Miami City Treasurer Pete Chircut joined thousands of Miamians in the Mercedes-Benz Corporate Run through downtown.

Chircut, 61, briskly walked most of it, but near the end he decided to run.

It would be the last thing he remembered before regaining consciousness.

Done with work for the day, Miami police Sgt. Javier Ortiz was at the Häagen-Dazs in Bayside Marketplace, where he snacked on a waffle cone and chatted with a few other city officers, he said.

Another officer’s radio crackled. A lieutenant called out, ” ‘There’s a man in cardiac arrest. Where’s fire rescue?’ ” Ortiz said.

He stood two blocks north, at Northeast Fifth Street, with his police car — and its city-issued automated external defibrillator — parked a block away.

Ortiz ran to his cruiser and drove. He found Chircut sprawled in the northbound lanes, about 200 feet from the finish line. His skin had begun to turn blue, and a group of people surrounded him, performing CPR.

The group included Hollywood Fire Rescue Chief Virgil Fernandez, himself a former member of Miami Fire-Rescue. His wife was running in the event.

Fernandez checked for a pulse — there was none — while others worked on the CPR.

“It seemed like 30 seconds later, this guy in civilian clothes shows up, comes in and brings an AED,” Fernandez said.

Ortiz grabbed his defibrillator bag and stepped in to help.

One person did compressions while Ortiz did rescue breathing, he said.

No pulse.

Fernandez ripped off Chircut’s shirt. Ortiz wiped off the sweat and placed the defibrillator pads on Chircut.

No pulse.

They did one more round of CPR, Ortiz said. Then the machine activated and shocked Chircut once, followed by more CPR.

Finally, a pulse.

About two minutes later, an ambulance arrived and took Ortiz to Mercy Hospital. Ortiz gave the truck a police escort to get it there faster.

The entire time, he only knew the man he helped save as an anonymous runner, Ortiz said. It wasn’t until later, at Mercy Hospital, Ortiz discovered he saved a fellow city employee.

“I was happy that I was able to help out not only a fellow human being, but a city employee,” Ortiz said. “I was just happy that I had the equipment to get the job done and be able to bring him back to life.”

Chircut went on to have double-bypass surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center on May 3, said his son, Gavin Chircut.

He also had a visit from Fernandez.

“He brought me a T-shirt that says City of Hollywood Fire-Rescue,” Pete Chircut said. ‘ He said, `I brought you back one because I tore the other one up.’ ”

This month, Chircut returned to his job, working half days.

“I don’t know what to say, except thank you,” Gavin Chircut said, “and even that doesn’t seem like enough.”

Ortiz is back at work and hoping the event helps the push to get more defibrillators.

Ortiz’s device is one of about 65 bought several years ago with grant money and issued to interested city police officers.

The defibrillators are part of the Miami Fire-Rescue Department’s Public Access Defibrillation program, which started in early 2005 and manages hundreds of the devices across the city in places like public buildings and parks, program coordinator Zachary Nicholas said.

An organization, like the Police Department, buys the machines. For a fee, the Fire-Rescue program provides training on how to use them and monitors the machines for needed changes or maintenance.

Nicholas compared them with fire extinguishers, another device people can use to save lives.

“We’re all out there as human beings, and we all have to be vigilant,” he said. “This is another tool in the arsenal.’

Ortiz hopes his story will inspire the city to find a way to equip all police officers with defibrillators.

“Police are armed with guns and authorized to take lives,” he said. “But, on the other side, we’re also here to save lives.”

It happened March 23rd, during the first class of the day.

Gym teacher Ken Haines said, “The class was doing a mile timed run. He was up toward the front and he was running strong, completed one lap, he was running around and right in this area right here, I saw him collapse down on all fours, seconds later he was just totally unresponsive.”

He was talking about seventh grader Travis Arnold. He radioed nursing assistant Tressa Palmer immediately, and sent students to get help.

“Two girls from the middle school came running and said that they needed me on the track, that a student was down,” said Palmer.

Two other staff members got the school’s defibrillator, or A.E.D. as she ran to the track. “I went over to Mr. Haines, he told me to try and see if I could find a pulse. I could not, Travis was still unconscious,” said Palmer.

Haines said, “She got the AED got right out here, I continued CPR while she hooked him up to the AED and shocked him and she started chest compressions and I was doing the breaths.”

His father, David Arnold remembers the call from the school secretary. “‘The word defibrillator was used’, and I said you only use a defibrillator on someone’s whose heart stopped. And she said Mr. Arnold you need to get to the hospital right now.”

What happened to the him was later called a sudden death episode. His parents say if the stars we not aligned that day, it all would be different. It seems everyone was in the right place at the right time.

A month later, Travis was back to school, and now, he’s just about back to doing all the things he used to do. “Yeah, 99 percent,” said Travis. He’s a man of few words, and thanks his favorite teacher. Dad is thankful he’s here to do it. “Like that day, I was just thankful I got to hug my son again.”

As the staff members and EMTs were honored, the gym teacher that saved his life said, “Travis, thanks for pulling through buddy, I appreciate that, and so does everyone else here”

Ironically, that gym teacher Ken Haines, collapsed in high school during a soccer game, was taken to the same hospital, and saved by a defibrillator.

A man running the Boston Marathon Monday was saved by spectators and fellow athletes after he collapsed and suffered cardiac arrest.

Carleton Smith the Survivor

Carleton Smith, 64, collapsed and staggered to the ground at the intersection of Beacon and Mountfort streets in Kenmore Square at about 1:20 p.m. The location is less than two miles from the end of the race.

He fell to the ground in front of a group of health care professionals from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute who were cheering on the Dana Farber team.

Authorities say some of those spectators came to Smith's aid, giving him CPR.

An ambulance crew that was about 20 feet away, as well as a bike unit, responded, and used a defibrillator to revive him.

“It was an amazing feeling for me,” said EMT Ginelle Jimenez, who was part of the Boston EMS bicycle crew. “It was my first in-the-field save, so it was a moment. It was surreal,” she said.

Smith’s wife, Mary, said at mile 25 their son Jim, who was running with his father, asked his father if he was alright, Smith shook his head no, and fell to the ground.

“He was in full cardiac arrest,” said Boston EMS Lt. Carlos Grau. “He was not breathing, or a heartbeat, neither one of them.”

“A woman jumped over the barricade, and she and I started doing CPR,” said Jim Smith.

“It couldn’t have turned out better for this gentleman that we were right there, and that there were people right there on the scene who knew how to help him,” said EMT Kelly Cronin.

Mary Smith told WBZ that she and her daughter-in-law were at the finish line waiting for their spouses, but didn’t hear an initial phone call from police telling her what had happened.

Her daughter-in-law then got the call informing them of where Carleton and Jim were.

Smith had a stent put in an artery at the Beth Israel.

“He’s sitting and talking,” said Mary Smith. She says he has never had heart problems before, and has run several marathons, including Boston in 2007.

Steve Aceto, 54, an attorney of Montreat, N.C., was running alongside Robert Barker, his childhood friend and neighbor who is a general practitioner and running enthusiast. Aceto’s son Bill was ahead of his father.

Steve Aceto the Survivor

Aceto and Barker had made it across the bridge and were on Meeting Street at about the five-mile marker when Aceto fell motionless in the street.

Barker quickly noticed his absence and turned back to render aid to his friend, who had suffered a heart attack five years ago.

Running behind them were a number of other doctors and nurses, many of them connected with the Medical University of South Carolina.

When they began attending to Aceto, they could not detect a pulse. They began administering CPR and called for an automated external defibrillator, which administered a shock that got Aceto’s heart beating again.

An ambulance had been summoned, and they were able to get him to MUSC for treatment within minutes of the incident.

Simon Watson, an emergency room physician from MUSC, was one of those runners closest to Aceto and called the hospital so the cardiac care team, headed by Eric Powers, could be assembled quickly.

Aceto said it was a wonderful run.

“I got over the bridge and back down. I got a good bit of the way down Meeting Street and was just about to the turn at the 5-mile marker. It was like flipping off a switch. I didn’t have any sensation of falling. Just a sharp pain and oblivion.

“My next memory was looking up and seeing a bunch of people I did not know who seemed very glad to see me. I found out later they had been doing CPR on me for about 10 minutes, including my dear friend who apparently pushed a beautiful emergency room nurse out of the way to do it. He and I are going to have words about that.”

Barker said that when he saw Aceto in the road he ran back, turned Aceto onto his back, grabbed his head and began yelling to him, trying to get a response.

“We had been talking, and then I looked to my left and he wasn’t there,” said Barker.

He placed his hand on his friend’s forehead and began praying.

“All of a sudden, his right hand moved. And then somebody said he’s breathing. He said, ‘I need to get up.’ It was like he came back from the dead.”

Aceto said technically he was dead, and he plans to frame his race number, stained with blood from where he hit the pavement, alongside the printout from the automated external defibrillator to prove he ran the race.

Aceto said there wasn’t time to be frightened, that he had trust in God as well as the professionals who were treating him.

“I happened to be among the right people,” he said, “at the right place and at the right time.”

Just before noon on June 6, Robert Glorioso, an off-duty Cleveland firefighter, was returning from a baseball game with his son in Aurora when he saw a woman lying on the side of the road.

He immediately pulled to the side of the road and leaped out to aid the stricken woman.

Seeing that she was completely unresponsive, he checked her pulse and breathing and immediately surmised that she had suffered a heart attack.

Glorioso called 911 and began CPR, realizing all the while that help would have to arrive quickly if the woman’s life was to be saved.

Aurora Police Department sergeant Stephen Sabulsky, who was on duty, responded in his cruiser.

He said he grabbed the medical kit out of his cruiser, including his defibrillator, and began to help Glorioso.

Sabulsky was able to detect a faint heart beat and used the defibrillator to help revive her heart.

‘It gave her a pretty good jolt,” Sabulsky recalled last week.

An ambulance arrived and the woman, Lisa Perez, 40, was taken to a local hospital, where she recovered.

The device was easy to use, Sabulsky said. He said when he responded, training and instinct took over and there was no time to think.

”The machine is simple,” he said.

His chief, Seth Riewaldt, said Sabulsky always tells the officers on his shift to make sure they have a defibrillator with them. He said he likes having the defibrillators because police are often on the scene of a medical emergency before paramedics.

”We try to tell to the guys you might have a chance to save someone’s life,” Riewaldt said.

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.