First Aid Corps

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

Adam Bassak the Survivor

Eau Claire Regis tennis player Matt Folstad, 16, was competing in a match when his parents noticed people congregating around Adam Bassak, Baldwin-Woodville’s assistant tennis coach.

John Folstad, 51, director of physician recruitment and relations at Sacred Heart Hospital, thought he might be able to assist.

When he approached, Bassak was facedown and someone was trying to feel for a pulse.

“I could see from his face that it was very blue in color,” John Folstad said of Bassak.

At that time, John Folstad and Duane Myklejord, a coach from Marshfield Columbus High School who is an anesthesiologist, used the log-roll technique to turn Bassak onto his back.

John Folstad and Myklejord determined Bassak had no pulse. Myklejord began rescue breathing, and John Folstad began chest compressions.

An athletic trainer from Marshfield Clinic, Ashley Lagerquist, who was at the tennis meet to assist players with injuries, already had called 911 and unpacked her automatic external defibrillator.

John Folstad and Myklejord continued CPR while the defibrillator was attached. Everyone stopped while Julie Folstad administered the shock to the heart, and then CPR was continued.

“Immediately we couldn’t feel a pulse,” John Folstad said. “We started CPR again and he started to wake up. He started to breathe on his own.”

Bassak, 30, of Woodville, remembers little. “The only thing I remember is right before it happened,” Bassak said on Tuesday.

Minutes before he collapsed, Bassak ran a tennis ball from an official to the courts. He guessed the distance was a couple of hundred yards.

“I remember feeling short of breath and lightheaded,” he said. “Once I came to, they asked what day it was, if I knew where I was – the typical questions. I remember I gave them the exact address of the high school.

“I was completely coherent.”

Bassak, who has a hereditary heart defect, had been in cardiac arrest. Neither he, nor any of his family members who have the same heart defect, has experienced cardiac arrest before, he said.

He considers himself lucky.

After he was revived, Bassak was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield where he was equipped with an internal defibrillator.

“I thank the people that were there and helped,” Bassak said. “I’m very lucky that all of those people were there. I’m lucky to be telling the story.”

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

David Page the Saviour

It was an early morning tennis lesson and then a bucket of balls to practice his serve.

Minutes into his practice the tennis player – just a month into learning the sport – collapsed on the court at the Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club.

He wasn’t breathing. His heart stopped beating.

David Page is in the tennis business – not in the business of saving lives. At least that was the case up until Wednesday when he looked up from the lesson he was teaching and saw one of his students – and friend – down.

Page, 47, ran inside the club and grabbed the Automated External Defibrillator. With firefighters on their way, Page began CPR.

The AED’s mechanical voice told him what to do and he did what he was told as he tried to shock his friend back to life.

He has a wife. He has a family. He had things to live for.

“You want to give the heart a little jumpstart,” Page said.

It was here where 12 years of CPR training came rushing in. And the sessions on how to use the AED – which had been installed at the club more than five years ago. Page knew how to use it. He just never expected he would have to.

“When you really have to do it it’s a whole different program,” Page said. “It was miraculous,” Page said. “I kept telling him ‘don’t do this to me. You better come through.’”

Three minutes after the 911 call firefighters from the Orange County Fire Authority arrived. The man had no pulse. His heart was quivering with no rhythm or beat. Page tried to get up to get out of their way. But the firefighters wouldn’t have any of it.

“They told me ‘get back down there and finish your chest compressions,’” Page said. So he did, helping OCFA Firefighter Paramedic Jim Bush continue CPR as Bush used an AED one more time on the fallen man.

Two minutes after firefighters arrived, he had a pulse and he was breathing on his own. Within five minutes he was opening his eyes.

Not many people come back from this,” said OCFA Capt. Jack Perisho who responded to Wednesday’s call of a man in full arrest. “I truly believe that because of the actions of David Page this guy is alive now.”

“Thank God,” Page said. “I love that man so much. I am just glad I was there to help.”

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

Evan Goodman (left) and Heritage Tennis Club employee Rob Laue (right)

Goodman, 68, suffered a severe heart attack on Dec. 15, seconds after his weekly tennis match at the Heritage Tennis Center in Arlington Heights. There wasn’t any chest clutching. No piercing pain. A week earlier he had passed his yearly physical with flying colors. 

“Maybe I felt a little heaviness in my chest but nothing unusual,” he said. “I was told I walked into the changing room. I don’t remember doing that.”

In the locker room, Goodman’s heart stopped and he slumped to floor.

The club’s assistant, Rob Laue, was at the front desk when he heard someone yell, “Call 911!” He grabbed the defibrillator off the wall and ran into the locker room.

“I was nervous, but I didn’t panic – although I’m getting a little nervous just thinking about it now,” Laue said with a deep breath and a smile. “I mean, you train for this, but you never really think it’s going to happen.”

When Laue reached Goodman, he was lying on his back and not breathing. Laue hooked up the defibrillator’s pads to Goodman’s chest and pressed the shock button. Then he gave Goodman 30 chest compressions before the paramedics arrived and took over.

“Knight in shining armor,” said Goodman, who dropped by the tennis club recently to see Laue. “If he didn’t do what he did, I wouldn’t be here. I wanted to say thanks. People don’t say thanks enough.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Goodman’s wife, Sandy, before embracing Laue, 31, of Round Lake Beach.

A few days after being released from the hospital, the lanky Goodman still appeared athletic, if a little tired.

What he’s not doing is dwelling on the past and what might have been.

“I mean, think about it, if it happened 15 minutes later when I was driving home, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said.