First Aid Corps

Allan Bealing and Caroline Marshall, from Wellington Free Ambulance, were waiting in a queue at Burger King in Courtenay Place about 2am on August 1 when Mr Ilton, who was across the road, suddenly collapsed.

Josh Ilton the Survivor

Recognising something was seriously wrong when Mr Ilton collapsed, his friend put him in the recovery position and dialled 111. Onlookers rushed over the street to get the paramedics, who quickly identified the signs of cardiac arrest.

“Josh had agonal respirations, [irregular breathing], sounding a bit like loud gasping or snoring,” Mr Bealing said.

Because of a large number of intoxicated bystanders, the paramedics transferred Mr Ilton to the back of an ambulance and began performing CPR and shocked him with a defibrillator to try to restart his heart.

A second Wellington Free Ambulance paramedic crew arrived to take him to Wellington Hospital, with Mr Bealing, Ms Marshall and a paramedic student continuing to perform CPR on the way.

Tests have shown no reason for his heart attack but he is scheduled to have an operation today to implant a defibrillator near his heart. “I was really lucky the paramedics worked on me so hard and were in the right place at the right time,” Mr Ilton said.

His mother, Nelma Pearce, was very grateful the paramedics recognised immediately that her son had not just fallen over drunk.

“The fact they were just across the road when Josh collapsed was a massive stroke of luck.”

Mr Bealing said that more often than not a patient did not survive this type of medical emergency.

“He primarily survived because CPR was started so soon after he collapsed and a defibrillator was nearby to deliver the shock that reverted the heart into its normal rhythm.

“Without these key factors he would have been unlikely to survive …”

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.”

The quick-acting staff of a pharmacy in Limerick, Ireland recently saved a man’s life with an AED following a car accident.

View World Map on AED Locations in a larger map

Fortunately for the patient, employees at DocMorris Pharmacy on William Street in Limerick had just received life-saving training on the AED a few days earlier.

Pharmacy manager Linda O’Brien said they were trained how to use the defibrillator on Tuesday and the accident happened right after lunch on Friday. “We were lucky the accident didn’t occur a week earlier when we were not equipped with an AED.”

It is believed the middle-aged man went into sudden cardiac arrest while driving up the street and crashed his vehicle into an unmarked Garda (Irish police) car.

Passersby alerted the pharmacy staff who rushed to the scene and retrieved their portable defibrillator as soon as they saw the victim’s condition.

Pharmacist Fatima Sadek used the AED to deliver a shock until paramedics arrived.

he man is expected to make a full recovery in a nearby hospital.

“We never thought we would have to use the AED so soon. The AED guided us through every step of the way,” said O’Brien. “I never realized how important AEDs were until the incident. Every business should have one.”

Two Kent Police officers responded to a report of a bicyclist lying in the road at about 3:09 p.m. Sunday in the 25400 block of Lake Fenwick Road, according to a Kent Police media release.

It was initially thought that the cyclist had been struck by a car, but reportedly he had collapsed while riding.

Officer Jeff Kluzak arrived within two minutes after the call and found the man unconscious. Following a quick medical assessment, the officer started CPR.

Moments later, officer Doug Westcott arrived to help. In an effort to revive the unresponsive man, an AED carried in the police car was used to deliver a shock to the man’s heart.

Paramedics then arrived and through the combined efforts of all the responders, the man was successfully revived. He was later transported to Valley Medical Center in Renton for further treatment.

This marked the first successful application of an AED by Kent Police since the units were initially deployed last month in each patrol car.

“All of us are very pleased that our officers were able to use their judgment, training, and equipment to save a life,” Kent Police Chief Steve Strachan said.

State Police Investigator Joshua Kean was returning to the Schodack station around 9 p.m. when he came upon two cars stopped on the side of the road with their hazard lights flashing, State Police said.

The motorists directed Kean to a man — later identified as 44-year-old Mark R. Mattice of Albany — lying on the shoulder of the road next to a bicycle.

Kean radioed for help, including a trooper with automated external defibrillator, while an off-duty State Park Police officer, Michael Maycheck, stopped at the scene to help Kean with CPR, State Police said.

Within minutes, two others, Trooper Patrick Hogan and Investigator Tim Northrup, arrived on the scene with a defibrillator. Northrup worked the defibrillator while the other three performed chest compressions on Mattice, troopers said.

EMS workers shocked Mattice twice, getting him to breath on his own. He was taken by ambulance to Albany Memorial Hospital.

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.

77-year-old Robert Monson was behind the wheel of a car that went out of control, clipped another car, crossed into oncoming traffic and slammed into a guardrail on County Road J near Interstate 35E. He had pulled out of the White Bear Township 17 Theatre parking lot, tried to turn and suffered the heart attack about 9:10 p.m..

A handful of good Samaritans who pulled him out of his car, laid him on the street and performed CPR as they waited for an ambulance.

“Myself and the fire department, we’re doing the job we’re trained to do,” said Deputy Rob Wilkinson, the first police officer or rescue worker to arrive at the scene.

“Those good Samaritans didn’t have to stop and help, and they did. He owes his life to ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Robert Monson was lying on his back unconscious, eyes wide open but not breathing and without a heartbeat, when Wilkinson and his partner arrived at the scene.

“I knew it was a critical situation,” Wilkinson said

Two men were performing CPR. Wilkinson asked a third bystander to hold a flashlight and another to start setting up oxygen, and then the deputy used an automated external defibrillator shock to the man’s chest.

“The defibrillator analyzed his heart rhythm, advised a shock. It (defibrillator) prompted me to shock him so I pressed the button, shocked him and he suddenly began gasping for air and was restored to somewhat of a normal cardiac rhythm,” Wilkinson said.

Monson immediately gasped for air.

“You could hear the gasping, it was amazing,” Mason said.

An ambulance arrived, and he was loaded in and shocked a second time before being transported to United Hospital in St. Paul, where he remained in the intensive care unit Sunday night.

“They were so good, the response was wonderful,” said Barbara Monson, who said Sunday night she tried to perform CPR on her husband in the vehicle before having to run out and flag people down. “I just flagged them down. … We were lucky the movie was just letting out and another one was starting.”

Wilkinson said the good Samaritans were vital in extending the window of time for the driver’s survival.

“The credit really goes to them,” Wilkinson said. “What they did enabled me to do what I did to save him. It’s a textbook case of what should happen when someone has a cardiac emergency.”

“It’s great to know that people out there care,” Monson said.

“I feel very very lucky, we’ve been married for 55 years, we’ve had a very good marriage, best friends, get along great,” Monson said.

The retired longshoreman, 85-year-old Bill Trujillo, strapped on his helmet and set out on a route he’d traveled many times.

John Heinrich the Saviour with Bill Trujillo the Survivor

There, his memory of that day stops. It picks up 20 days later, when he regained consciousness in a hospital and was told he’d suffered a heart attack, fallen off his bicycle and ultimately underwent six-way bypass surgery.

On Aug. 24, Heinrich was off-duty and traveling with his wife to Wal-Mart to buy supplies for the high school class he helps teach.

They were at the intersection of Elm Street and Mills Avenue when they saw Trujillo lying in the street, tangled in a bicycle about a block south.

They detoured and drove to the man, where Heinrich jumped out of the vehicle.

A bystander was about to move Trujillo out of the roadway, but the firefighter said to wait, in case the man had spinal injuries.

“I checked for a pulse, and he didn’t have one,” Heinrich said.

It all happened very quickly, Heinrich said, but instinct and training kicked in instantly.

He started CPR while using his cell phone to call for help. Fellow on-duty firefighters arrived with a defibrillator and used it twice before Trujillo’s heart started beating again.

“Really, all I did was keep him alive until they got here with the defibrillator,” Heinrich said.

An ambulance soon arrived and took Trujillo to Lodi Memorial Hospital. He was then transferred to Mercy Hospital in Sacramento.

Mike Trujillo noted that Heinrich’s training saved his father’s life, allowing the family to celebrate Thanksgiving today.

“He acted not only as a fireman but as a citizen,” he said. “We should probably all learn CPR.”

Jim Munn, 70, and Herschel Worthy had spare time in August when they drove up for a look at the recently renovated, upscale Mirimichi golf course near Millington.

But on the way, Worthy saw something was wrong with his friend.

“I touched him, and he fell over against the door,” Worthy said.

Worthy wheeled around and pulled onto O.K. Robertson Road, flagging down Burford, Harrifeld and Nichols, who were headed to lunch after training at the academy near U.S. 51.

They put him in an ambulance, but Munn was in full cardiac arrest.

Burford performed CPR — “I pumped that chest hard” — while the paramedics administered drugs and shocked Munn at least six times with a defibrillator.

Then they rushed him to Methodist University Hospital.

Despite their efforts, they were pretty sure he wasn’t going to make it, and they often never find out how their patients do because of confidentiality laws.

But Munn, now with a small automatic defibrillator implanted in his chest, was determined that they know their long shot paid off.

He traveled from California for a gathering the fire department hosted Friday for him and the firefighters.

Munn knows he wouldn’t be alive without the firefighters’ determination not to let him go.

“What words do you use to thank somebody who saved your life?” Munn asked, wiping away a tear. “There’s not any. It’s just handshakes and hugs.”

“Had they not done all the things they did, I would have been dead on arrival,” said Munn, whose only lingering side-effect is a 10-day gap in his memory and a sore chest from Burford’s vigorous CPR.

“Every time I breathe and it hurts, I say, ‘Thank you,’” he said.

Magda Lugo, 59, a resident of the Bayville section, was a passenger in her son’s car about 1:20 p.m. Wednesday when Patrolman John Sperber stopped the vehicle, said Detective Sgt. James J. Smith.

Lugo’s son, Eric Cappas, 38, of Farrelly Avenue, was driving on Forest Hills Parkway and was at Bill Zimmerman Jr. Way, when Sperber signaled him to pull over. Cappas jumped out and told the officer his mother “was having a heart attack,” Smith said.

Cappas and another person helped remove Lugo from the car and placed her on the ground while Sperber retrieved his automated external defibrillator — AED — from his patrol car, Smith said.

Detective Will Cullen, Sgt. David Britton and officers Richard Breitenbach and Don Rowley assisted at the scene. The officers performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on Lugo in between four shocks delivered from the AED before an emergency medical services crew arrived, Smith said.

Carol Sasso, an employee of the Ocean County Sheriff Department’s dispatch center, stopped at the scene to help and two Berkeley Township employees from the Public Works department also helped out, Smith said.

En route to Community Medical Center, medics shocked Lugo’s heart another four times, Smith said.

She received an emergency cardiac procedure at Community Medical Center in Toms River, and remained a patient there Friday.