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“I didn’t even have chest pains or shortness of breath,” Teale said. “I don’t remember much.”

Brad Teale (left) the Survivor

Teale didn’t die that night thanks to the efforts of 12 men, who pitched in to save his life. The Urbandale City Council honored those men with lifesaver certificates and pins that say, “I made CPR Count,” during a meeting on Tuesday night.

Teale went into sudden cardiac arrest, which is not the same thing as a heart attack, although a heart attack can cause it. His teammates didn’t care what had happened to him, they just wanted to help their teammate.

“The debate was whether it was a seizure or a heart attack,” said one of Teale’s lifesavers, Charles Greth of Clive. “I didn’t care what it was, I was determined to wake him up.”

Greth was one of a dozen men playing basketball that night that had a role in reviving Teale. A few started CPR, one called 911, some tried to locate his family and another located the defibrillator at the school and used it on Teale.

Greth’s children attend Walnut Hills Elementary, which is why he knew there was an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) somewhere in the building.

“I remember seeing it somewhere in the building, I just had to run to the place I thought it was and grab it,” Greth said.

Sudden cardiac arrest means “the heart stops,” said Fire Chief Jerry Holt. “There’s a disturbance in the electrical activity and the heart’s no longer rhythmically beating.”

The crew of men said the defibrillator had “dummy-proof” instructions on it. They set it up and waited for the machine to check his heart rate. After the machine confirmed he didn’t have a heart rate, it indicated they should stand back and wait for the shock. Teale was resuscitated after a few shocks and ready for the emergency crew when the arrived 10 minutes later.

“These guys deserve all the credit for basically bringing my back to life,” Teale said in front of the council and guests. “The AED said I had no heartbeat, so they literally brought me back to life. A lot of people nowadays are afraid to jump in and do anything but they got right to it.”

Teale had one basketball buddy trained in CPR, Stewart Card of Des Moines who is a physical education teacher. Overall, he had a group of concerned friends determined to save his life.

“I wouldn’t have anyone to guard,” said Card of why he performed CPR to save his friend’s life.

The group has been playing basketball together for nearly 20 years in a casual game. Troy Bothwell of West Des Moines rents the gym each year to play with his usual group of friends.

“When we have these cases we like to spotlight them,” said Holt. “Especially since it’s few and far between that outcome in these kinds of cases are so good.”

He praised the men for taking action instead of merely calling 911, which might have been too late for Teale.

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The 57-year-old St. Albert father of three collapsed at a pickup soccer game Nov. 14 in the Edmonton Soccer Centre South. His heart stopped, cutting off the blood’s supply of oxygen and nutrients to his brain. At a time when his risk of brain damage and death climbed by the second, there was an automated external defibrillator (AED) nearby and one of Robertson’s teammates was an off-duty emergency medical technician who knew how to use it.

“I remember warming up and joking with one of my buddies, ‘Gee, look at us. We’re the oldest two here,’ ” Robertson said Friday at a news conference on the field where it happened.

“The next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital.”

Matt Austin, 37, was in net at the other end of the indoor field when he saw Robertson lying face-down on the ground.

“Since I didn’t see the play, I guess I assumed initially it was a head injury,” said the Edmonton man, who has been an EMT for three years and works in Camrose.

Matt Austin the Saviour and Allan Robertson the Survivor

Austin quickly realized Robertson wasn’t breathing. He started cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and told teammates to call 911 and get the defibrillator the soccer centre keeps near the front door.

“I attached it right away and gave him his first shock after it advised me to do that,” Austin said. “I didn’t feel any pulse or breathing or anything like that again, so I started compressions, did a couple rounds of that, and he took two breaths and his eyes opened for a second.”

After two more rounds of CPR, Robertson gasped for air and opened his eyes. “Within 30 seconds of that, he was actually trying to get off the turf here. He was trying to get up. I said, ‘No, Al, you’ve got to stay down. Stay where you’re at. The ambulance is on its way.’ ”

Approximately four minutes passed between the time Robertson collapsed and when Austin revived him and he tried to get up. The ambulance arrived a few minutes after that, Austin said.

“The brain doesn’t go very long without oxygen. Three to five minutes, they say, is the average, so without early intervention with either CPR or AED or, ideally, both, the possibility of recovery is a lot less.”

Austin said his training took over during the dramatic events. “CPR, I’ve done many times but I’ve never had positive results out of it. By the time an ambulance gets there, if CPR hasn’t been initiated, we’re outside that three- to five-minute window just about always. If CPR hadn’t been started by the so-called bystander, the results would have been a lot worse.”

Robertson was taken to the Grey Nuns Hospital where he had surgery to implant a defibrillator that keeps his heart pumping properly.

Doctors told him the cardiac arrest was caused by a heart abnormality called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which Robertson might have inherited. Robertson doesn’t know yet if he’ll be able to play soccer again, something he’s done twice a week for the past 20 years.

He had no indication of heart trouble before the cardiac arrest.

“I’m just so thankful to be here with everyone and I’m so thankful to Matt,” Robertson said. “Fortunately, Matt was here that day.”

Roberson is convinced he would have died had his cardiac arrest happened during another soccer game he plays every week.

“I play soccer with another group as well, on Friday night, and if this had happened at that venue, they don’t have a defibrillator there. I asked the guys after I visited there, ‘Does anybody know CPR?’ and of the guys that were there, not one knew CPR.”

Robertson’s wife, Karen, said her husband had “a real guardian angel with him that day.” The incident has helped the Robertsons focus on what’s really important in life, such as friends and family, she said.

Austin said he is grateful he could make such a difference to the lives of so many people who love Robertson, including Robertson’s wife and three adult kids.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” Austin said. “It’s an incredible feeling. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

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Moments later, Alls told his friends to call 911.

“Then I laid back and I looked at the ceiling and I was out,” Alls said.

He was in cardiac arrest.

Rob McCann, one of his friends, started chest compressions, something he had not done in years.

“I remember yelling to the guys, ‘Does anybody know how to do this better?’” McCann said.

Alls was quickly fading.

“I actually looked at his face. It was bluish-gray,” said John Santos. “I thought, we may not be able to get him back.”

Then Santos, an employee at South Shore School, remembered that the school recently installed a defibrillator down the hall.

“That’s when it hit me, we’ve got one of those things that’ll fix him,” Santos said. “So I ran and got it.”

The device started talking to the men, giving them instructions before shocking Alls and getting his heart started.

“His color came back right away,” Hilliard said.

Alls remembers hearing the defibrillator’s voice as he woke up.

“I was like, ‘What was that sound?’” he said. “And while I was conscious, it zapped me another time.”

Paramedics arrived moments later and rushed Alls to the hospital. He underwent angioplasty and is expected to make a full recovery.

Seattle Public Schools installed defibrillators in every school, administrative building and at all 15 outside sports fields at the beginning of the school year. The district collaborated with the Heart of Seattle Schools, a non-profit organization that includes the Seattle Seahawks, Sounders, hospitals and Nick of Time Foundation.

“It saved my life,” Alls said. “I’m here to tell you that was saved by that and I just cannot be more grateful for that.”

Bill Curtis the Survivor with Tom Hendley and Ed Neace the Saviours

Thanks to the quick response of his fellow players, Tom Hendley and Ed Neace, and the fact that the league recently purchased a defibrillator to take to its games, Curtis is alive and well and able to tell his story.

“I remember reaching second base. After that, the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital four days later,” said Curtis, who prior to the event had never had any health problems and had never been hospitalized.

Bill’s wife, Nancy, was at his bedside when he awoke.

“The first thing he said when he woke up was that he remembered hitting the ball hard over Ed’s head in the outfield and how mad Ed was,” Nancy Curtis said.

After Bill Curtis hit his double, the next batter hit a ball to the outfield to Neace.

“There were two outs, so Bill was running from second to third. Then he took off for home, hoping I’d miss the ball,” Neace, 63, said. “I caught it. I was coming in from the outfield when I saw it happen.”

Neace said Bill Curtis stumbled a little and then went head first into the fence.

“I didn’t realize it at the time. I was running back to the dugout from the field, then I saw someone lying down on the ground. I said, ‘Who’s down? Who’s down?’ Then I saw it was Bill. I rushed over to him and Tom was already there,” Neace said. “He said, ‘Call 911. He’s not responding.”

Just a few weeks before Bill Curtis’ cardiac arrest, several of the Henderson County Senior League softballers had participated in a CPR training class conducted by Dan Hayes of the EMS. Hendley, the Senior League’s president, had suggested the class for his fellow players and also suggested that they purchase a defibrillator to have at all their games.

“We had the training about 4-5 weeks earlier, and praise the Lord we had that training,” Neace said.

Hendley, 66, a retired police officer from New Jersey, was the first to see Bill Curtis go down.

“I went to him and turned him over, and he had a gash on his head where he had hit the fence,” Hendley said. “So I didn’t know if he had just tripped and hit the fence and that was his problem or if the problem had happened before that. When I saw that he was unresponsive, I knew the problem happened before he hit the fence.”

Without hesitation, Hendley and Neace put their training into action.

“So then I opened up his airway and tried to help him to breathe, and then I saw his eyes roll back, I knew we had lost him,” Hendley said.

Hendley immediately got the defibrillator and hooked Bill Curtis to it.

“The machine takes a few seconds to analyze, and it will tell you whether or not a shock is needed. When I hooked Bill up to it, it said ‘shock advised,’ so we shocked him. His body went clean off the ground, and we all stood back,” Hendley said. “It’s quite a jolt.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t remember that,” Bill Curtis laughed.

After Hendley felt a faint pulse from the shock of the defribillator, he was trying to get Bill Curtis to breathe while Neace did chest compressions.

“We were both focused and working so feverishly to help Bill that we didn’t even notice the EMS guys arrive,” Hendley said.

“I was doing the chest compressions when I got tapped on the shoulder. It was the EMS guy, and I kept working and said, ‘Hang on, I’m still working on him.’ After the EMS guy took over, I had a sigh of relief,” Neace said.

“We were so into what we were doing, we didn’t know how much time had passed,” Hendley said.

“I know it wasn’t long before the EMS guys were there, but from the time he went down to the time they arrived, it seemed like an eternity. Everything was like in slow motion,” Neace said.

When EMS did take over CPR, Bill Curtis went into cardiac arrest again.

“The EMS guys got there and worked on him and then had to shock him again,” Hendley said. “Then they got him on the ambulance and took him to Pardee (Hospital).”

Bill Curtis’ nightmare wasn’t over yet. His heart stopped twice more in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

“They said he died four times … twice on the field and twice in the ambulance,” Neace said.

“That means he has five lives left,” Nancy Curtis said.

Once he was revived and doctors performed tests on him in the ICU, there was great news.

“The doctors said there was no heart or brain damage,” Neace said.

“The doctors said they were expecting to find some kind of blockage in the arteries and they were fully expecting to have to do heart surgery. They found nothing. They said I had a healthy heart, and they still have no clue why it stopped that day,” Bill Curtis said.

There were no warning signs for Bill Curtis, and on his official discharge papers from the hospital, the diagnosis was “sudden cardiac death.”

“They say there’s only like a 6 percent chance of surviving that,” Bill Curtis said.

Nancy Curtis remembers the call and was preparing for the worst when she made her way to Jackson Park that day.

“What’s strange is that Bill and I had talked just the night before about what would we do if something happened to one of us. We’ve been together 45 years, and being together with someone that long, I truly believe you get a sixth sense about someone. It was like we knew something was about to happen,” she said.

Bill Curtis is getting used to his new lifestyle after the event. Now, he has a device that will shock his heart, along with a pacemaker to regulate it, if cardiac arrest happens again.

One thing he’s having a hard time adjusting to is the fact that he can’t drive.

“I guess the law is that if you die, you aren’t allowed to drive for six months,” Nancy Curtis said.

But he will be allowed to get back on the field in just six weeks.

“That’s incredible when you think about it and when you witnessed what we did that day,” Neace said. “But if you knew what kind of a person Bill is, it wouldn’t really surprise you. He runs three miles a day, and he’s in better shape than most anyone on that field. He was the last person in the world I thought that would happen to.”

Bill Curtis has already been back to the field, cheering on his fellow players, but he’s itching to get the bat in his hands once again.

“He’s a great player, and we can’t wait to get him back,” Hendley said.

And Bill’s wife isn’t about to hold him back from the sport he loves.

“I truly believe that if Bill would’ve been home with me that day, and I live just a quarter-mile from Mission Hospital, he would be dead or brain damaged. It would’ve taken too long for trained help to arrive,” she said.

“For women worried about their men playing softball, let me say this: There is no safer place for your man to be than at Jackson Park on any Tuesday or Friday if it doesn’t rain or snow.”

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NewsChannel Five’s Ann Rubin was there as Spiros was reunited with the people who saved his life.

The incident happened Monday at the Kirkwood Ice Rink.

Goalie Stephen Spiros was playing well, Little did he know someone else would have the best “save” of the night.

Spiros says, “I was having a good game and the next thing I know, I don’t know anything.”

Spiros had suffered a massive heart attack. But as he lay motionless, others took action.

First Craig Merrifield from the opposing team, ran for the AED. His own father had died from a heart attack, so he knew every moment mattered.

He says, “I know it at every rink, I know exactly where it is. I know which rinks have them, which rinks don’t.”

The Kirkwood rink has an AED. And thankfully, Spiro’s teammate Don Guenther knew how to use it.

He had recently been trained on the device through his church.

Guenther says, “I held my finger there and somebody said push the darn button and I boom pushed the button.”

It took two shocks, but by the time paramedics arrived, Spiros’s heart was beating.

They say that AED made all the difference.

Guenther says, “The paramedics told us that if we wouldn’t have responded so quickly, that we wouldn’t still have a goalie on our team.”

Jaguar’s coach Brian Robinson says, “If Steve had been anywhere else, had he been at the store, the theater, the outcome would have been very different.”

He spent nearly a week recovering at Des Peres Hospital.

And one of his first acts upon his release Sunday, thanking the men who saved his life.

He’ll wear a portable defibrillator for now. But doctors say his prognosis is good.

So is his outlook.

He says, “God wasn’t finished with me yet. So this was the first day of the rest of my life.”

Doctors told Spiros no hockey for at least 90 days. In the meantime, he’ll be cheering his teammates on, and talking up the importance of knowing how to use that AED.

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Paramedic Bruce Binda saved his teammate’s life when the man suffered a heart attack while playing hockey at a local arena around 11 a.m. Saturday.

“He collapsed on his hands and knees,” said Binda, who has been an emergency worker for 21 years but wasn’t on duty Saturday. “I thought he was injured.”

Still on the ice, Binda immediately began CPR and used the public Automated External Defibrillator, shocking the 41-year-old man three times.

Binda’s colleagues arrived and took over, transporting the man to hospital, where he’s conscious and speaking.

Paramedic Supt. Steven Leu said Binda is “one of the guys who, ironically, took the day off.”

The men were playing a regular-season game, said Binda, adding his friend of 10 years is married with two children.

“I’m pretty happy with the result,” said Binda.

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Simcoe County paramedics responded to a 911 call at the North Simcoe Sports and Recreation Centre in Midland on Nov. 1 after a man collapsed while playing hockey with friends.

“Bystanders and members of the hockey team immediately came to his aid, calling 911 and performing CPR,” Midland police Insp. Ron Wheeldon stated in a news release. “An AED was then successfully utilized to shock the man’s heart and regain a pulse.”

Paramedics continued life-saving measures and took the man to Georgian Bay General Hospital for treatment.

Parks and recreation director Bryan Peter was not at the arena when the incident happened, but said the man was there as part of a private hockey group rental.

“My understanding is that particular group has some volunteer firefighters and some police officers that would have been off duty, so they would have had lots of people that would have been trained,” he said. “Our staff is all trained, as well, so our guys grabbed the machine and (his teammates) fixed him up and an ambulance was called.”

The incident reportedly took place while the man was sitting on the bench.

“From what we heard, he was sitting on the bench and the guy next to him noticed he was having some problems,” Peter said, adding there are currently two AED machines in the building.

To the best of his knowledge, this was the first time one of the machines in the building has been used. However, it does mark the sixth successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest in Simcoe County directly attributed to the public-access defibrillator program.

“This is just a really good … example of how important they are,” said Peter. “Who knows when someone is going to experience a heart problem?”

Coyne, 49, was playing an 8:45 p.m. match at Kemp Field in Folsom.

He’d just been subbed back in after a breather and the ball was down at the other end of the long field.

“As I ran onto the field, I said, ‘I don’t feel too well,’ and that’s all I remember.

As in: That’s all he remembers between Oct. 27, when he collapsed, and Wednesday, when his head began to clear after surgery to implant a heart defibrillator.

“Today I feel great,” Coyne said Thursday. “According to my wife, yesterday and the day before I was pretty incoherent.”

That he’s alive at all is thanks to the fact that two of his Turn Verein soccer teammates – unbeknown to Coyne – were an emergency medical technician and a Mercy General Hospital cardiac rehab program director.

“None of them (his cardiac patients) ever collapsed on me in the middle of exercise,” said Ken Rogaski, the rehab coordinator, who did chest compressions to keep Coyne’s heart going until Folsom Fire Department paramedics arrived.

“I’m so glad he said something,” said Rogaski. “Everyone was looking in the exact opposite direction.”

Rogaski’s quick actions make Coyne a rarity, a person who had a heart attack outside the hospital and survived.

“Their chances of surviving are less than 5 percent,” said Bryan Gardner, a spokesman for Mercy Hospitals.

Rogaski and another team member heard Coyne breathing, but found his pulse was irregular and weak.

Rogaski, trained in an advanced version of CPR, started the compressions.

Coyne was taken to Mercy Folsom where he was stabilized and his body cooled – a method used in recent years to give the body’s organs a better chance of surviving after severe cardiac problems.

Then he was transferred to Mercy General in Sacramento for surgery to install a cardioverter-defibrillator.

His family lives in Placerville, but his wife, Marjorie, and 18-year-old daughter Paris had to rush back from Mexico City, where Paris had a modeling job. He also has a son, John, 16.

Coyne thought he was in good shape, playing soccer three or four times a week.

His wife reminded him, “You have a history of passing out.” He would get light-headed getting up from bed.

“Not always,” Coyne said, knowing he should’ve had it checked out before.

His teammates learned something from the incident, too. The day after the attack, Rogaski ran into another teammate at a youth soccer game.

“He had already enrolled in CPR training,” Rogaski said.

“They just need to know how to do that,” Gardner said.

“Actually, I’m going to have to take a CPR class,” Coyne said.

He hopes to be back at work in a week or so. “I’m a graphic designer. It doesn’t take much to sit down and open a computer.” His online profile at his firm describes him as a “soccer fiend.”

He feels blessed to be doing anything.

“I wouldn’t be here if Ken wasn’t on our team,” he said. “I’d be dead.”

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Ottawa paramedics said the 40-year-old man was playing hockey at Kanata’s John Mlacak arena around 12:30 p.m. when he collapsed after coming off the ice.

They said his teammates and an off-duty nurse started CPR and used a defibrillator from the arena to shock his heart.

When paramedics arrived they said the man had a pulse and was breathing on his own. They stabilized him and then brought him to hospital.

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“As I’m sitting here talking to you, I really shouldn’t be,” said Askari, soccer player.

Askari, 51, was playing with his adult soccer team in Balch Springs when his heart stopped.

“All of a sudden I felt dizzy,” Askari recalled. “I felt my knee gave up. And I was just getting closer to the ground. But I didn’t feel the hitting. I remember that I wanted to keep going but I couldn’t.”

Surveillance video from Premier Park in Balch Springs showed the fuzzy mob of team-mates gathering around his fallen body on the soccer field.

Two doctors on the team started CPR.

It was a player on the other team who offered a life-saving assist..

“And I yelled out to them,” said Chris LeBlanc, who played for the Balch Springs team, “Hey do you need the defibrillator?

Surveillance video captures LeBlanc running to the complex building, retrieving the AED, and handing it off to one of Askari’s teammates.

Unlike UIL sanctioned youth events, automated external defibrillators or AED’s are not required for recreational or adult sports leagues.

The ‘Over 40′ aged players at Premier Park in Balch Springs insisted on having an AED handy.

“The majority of our players are older,” says Larry Hall, president of Premier Park. “And they requested that we have a difib here just in case. It’s one of those things where you hope you never need to use, but you hope you have it just in case you do.”

“The first attempt I hear did not work,” says Askari. “Nothing happened. Second attempt, I came back.”

Two days later, Askari had a defibrillator implanted surgically.

While he may never be cleared to play soccer again, he’s expected to recover fully.

He was given a signed game ball signed by members of both teams who witnessed his collapse.

Ali Askari believes the only reason he avoided an unexpected and ultimate red card is because there were two doctors and an AED at the game.