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.”
Charles Gordon slipped into unconsciousness after having the attack at the wheel of his car outside Aberdeen’s Union Square complex on February 16 this year.
The 76-year-old hit the car in front of him during the incident, which happened beside the centre’s New Look store.
Emergency services were called and police officers pulled Mr Gordon, of Highgate Gardens, Aberdeen, from the car.
Constable Gillian Esson then began giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, until passer-by Ewen Simpson, 42, of Macbeth Place, Lumphanan – an experienced first aider – carried out CPR.
Meanwhile, Richard Lornie, 31, of Devanha Terrace, Aberdeen, who was a passenger in the car which had been hit by Mr Gordon’s vehicle, rushed into nearby Cineworld to find a defibrillator to help save Mr Gordon.
Mr Lornie said he feared the worst after the paramedics arrived but was relieved when he heard Mr Gordon had survived.
“Luckily I was on a refresher course in using a defibrillator the day before, so when I saw Charles I knew what had happened,” he said.
“It is nice to be recognised, but what is more important is that Charles was OK afterwards – he was still in the ambulance when I left the scene and I was not sure he would pull through.
“I was glad to see so many other people wanting to come and help as well.”
Mr Lornie administered a shock before the crew took over.
Mr Gordon congratulated the people who came to his aid, and said: “Everyone since has told me it was a little miracle, and as far as I am concerned that is exactly what it was.
“All I can do is thank them profusely for what they did for me.”
Officer Brenda Johnson was at the Group Health Bellevue Medical Center on Sunday, March 14 on an unrelated call when a frantic woman ran into the lobby, saying her husband was having a heart attack.
Officer Johnson ran out to the woman’s car and found the man in the passenger seat, unconscious and unresponsive. She got the man out of the car and called for backup.
Group Health personnel helped her pull the man from the car and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Officer Andrew Popochock arrived with a defibrillator. Both medical personnel and Officer Popochock operated the unit.
After two rounds from the defibrillator, the man regained a pulse and he was admitted to the emergency room. He was recovering at Overlake Hospital Monday.
“This event is a testament to the defibrillator program and our enhanced ability to save lives,” said Patrol Major Cherie Baker. “Officers Johnson and Popochock should be commended for their quick thinking and action. They saved valuable seconds getting the shock delivered.”
Lt. Danielle Frye,a fire marshal for Loudoun County, was driving along Edwards Ferry Road near Woodberry Road when she noticed a vehicle driving erratically.
Moore, Kadric & Fyre the Saviours
When the vehicle stopped, Frye noticed the driver, Terry McCaffrey, of Leesburg, was slouched over the wheel unconscious.
Officer Mirza Kadric saw the stopped vehicle and thought it was a traffic accident, so he stopped.
When he realized that 7-year-old Leesburg man McCaffrey was unconscious, Kadric radioed dispatch for assistance and helped Frye pull him onto the road.
The two noticed McCaffrey wasn’t breathing and did not have a pulse, so they began CPR – Kadric giving chest compressions while Frye gave rescue breaths.
Leesburg Police Sgt. T.J. Moore heard the call from the police station and responded with an Automated External Defibrillator.
When Moore arrived, Frye thought about the snow on the ground and placed her coat under McCaffrey so he would be dry while they used the defibrillator on him.
Kadric and Frye placed the wires on McCaffrey’s chest, while Moore operated the machine.
The defibrillator took McCaffrey’s readings and advised that Moore administer a shock, so he did.
McCaffrey’s heart started beating just as an ambulance arrived to take him to Inova Loudoun Hospital.
He is expected to make a full recovery from his heart attack.
Frye, Kadric and Moore said that during the incident, what they had learned in training completely took over.
“It was almost like a thoughtless process,” Moore said.
Frye said that after McCaffrey’s heart started beating, she felt “a sense of awe that it worked.”
“It’s good to see that side of helping somebody,” Kadric said.
“It feels good to save somebody’s life, but it’s what we do,” Moore said, adding that he felt a sense of relief when he heard the ambulance arrive.
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.
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.
On Sept. 18, as 71-year-old George Allison was in the back seat of his son Craig Allison’s car driving on Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo, Calif., he suffered sudden cardiac arrest.
George Allison (right) the Survivor
“We had just finished some conversation and there was some quiet time. Within about 30 seconds my son turned around,” said Barbara, who was riding in the front seat.
From the look on Craig’s face, she said, she knew something terrible was happening.
Her husband of nearly 50 years wasn’t breathing.
Craig pulled the car to the shoulder and yanked his father’s body from the back seat and tried to administer the Heimlich maneuver, thinking his father had choked on a peanut.
“My daughter-in-law got out and she was screaming for help. Her cell phone wouldn’t work,” said Barbara. “Craig pulled him out of the car and laid him on the ground, and the people showed up.”
Those people were strangers Daniel Lapidus, a San Luis Obispo dentist who had recently finished his active duty with the Air Force, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and Marisela Campos, a public health employee working toward a degree in nursing.
Lapidus started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and Campos began chest compressions.
Barbara Allison said the two strangers worked for eight minutes to try to get her husband to breathe again.
A California Highway Patrol trooper arrived on scene and hit George with a defibrillator, which sends an electric shock to the heart.
George was rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to implant a defibrillator in his chest.
By Monday, he and his wife were home.
“The most memorable part of this is the people and how they reacted — the lady, the dentist and the highway patrolman — the things they did. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t ask,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “All of those things needed to come together just right, and they did.”
“Eight minutes of CPR is a very long time and almost never happens,” said Barbara. “There are very few who could have lived under these circumstances.”
Edward Bennett, 48, a Binghamton truck driver, said his 47-year-old wife almost seemed to be struggling to breathe as he ran into the restaurant to have someone call 911.
He didn’t think to check her pulse because her medical history was related to breathing problems. She had a history of asthma and the beginning stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The dispatcher told a Sonic employee that Bennett needed to get her out of the car and onto the ground to begin breathing techniques associated with CPR.
As he did that, Broome County Sheriff Sgt. Scot McDonald arrived at the scene and took control.
He gave her two breaths and checked for a pulse. When he found none, he did chest compressions and later he hooked her up to an automatic external defibrillator (AED) that sheriff’s deputies keep in the trunks of patrol vehicles.
He shocked her once. When her heart didn’t start, he shocked her again.
“I was bawling. I was crying. I just wanted to see her come back,” Edward Bennett said. “I was terrified.”
About a minute later, Morris, a paramedic with Chenango Ambulance, arrived in his personal car. He was followed shortly by two ambulances.
“When I got there, Scot was on the ground doing excellent CPR, using the AED as he is trained,” said Morris.
Nancy has since been released from the intensive-care unit at Lourdes Hospital and her husband said doctors told him her heart is strong.
She’s still struggling to breathe and is sore from her ribs breaking during chest compression, but all things considered, she’s doing well, Edward Bennett said.
“The sheriff got there quick. Thank God he had the defibrillator with him,” he said. “If it wasn’t for him, I’m pretty sure my wife would be dead or have brain damage.”
On May 9, 2007, Cpl. Jeffrey Bauer was on routine patrol when he turned onto Solomons Island Road and saw a car stopped. He approached and found the man inside slumped over the wheel, suffering from a heart attack.
Cpl Jeffrey Bauer the Saviour
Bauer performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and, after using his defibrillator, he was able to revive the man, who survived.
The next day, he was called to a home for a cardiac problem nearby on Tarragon Court where a man had collapsed on the floor.
“Less than three minutes later, Cpl. Bauer was on the scene and calmly utilized his skills with CPR and his (defibrillator) to revive the victim, ultimately saving his life,” Capt. William Krampf, commander of the Southern, said.
“It’s my job, that’s it,” he said later of his lifesaving rescues.
“He enthusiastically does his very best and helps motivate others around him to do their very best in spite of sometimes very little recognition,” Krampf said.
