School Saves

Scotty was on 2nd base, Chuck was pitching, it was 2nd innings of the last game of the season.
“Chuck looks around at the field, makes sure everybody is ready. He turns around to throw the next pitch and falls straight onto his back,” Scotty recalled. Chuck didn’t move and hadn’t called out. He just went down. Everyone ran over to him, and Scotty saw he wasn’t breathing properly. Scotty Jones knew CPR, he’d been trained every year at school. The Westminster Schools, where he works as a music teacher, has a policy of annual CPR training and refresher courses.* 

Michaela Gagne, Fall River, MA - 15 at time of event (1998)

As a teenager Michaela was not thinking about crowns and gowns. She preferred shorts and boots—soccer boots that is. Despite her ambition to be a Division 1 player Michaela was crowned Miss Massachusetts in 2006 and went on to compete for the title of Miss America 2007. Her platform issue was Heart Health: Listen, Learn, and Live. How is it that a self-confessed tomboy suddenly started entering beauty pageants?

Fridley High School was playing Simley on a Thursday night, December 13, 2007 in St Paul, MN. There were five minutes left in the game, when the 49-year-old referee, Dale Wakasugi, suffered a cardiac arrest.

“I went down, bam, and it was lights out. I don’t remember a thing, but a 16-year-old girl from the high-school ran out of the stands and started CPR,” Dale said in awe. The girl with the fortitude was 11th-grader Lindsey Paradise. “Lindsey was on me in seconds.” Dale confirmed. As more people gathered to help, someone grabbed an AED from the wall of the gymnasium. They attached the defibrillator to Dale’s chest and checked to see if it registered a pulse. The voice prompt announced that it was a shockable rhythm.

In a textbook case of the “Chain of Survival” — 9-1-1 was called, CPR started, and the AED used within just a few minutes of Doug Chrisman’s collapse.

It was early one Monday morning, and Doug, a student at the Culinary Institute of America, was busy skimming the stock in preparation for that day’s class. The stock didn’t make it. Doug did. His classmates saw the freshman from Missouri collapse, and one of them ran to get the nurse. The chef called the Safety Office and an AED was immediately brought to the scene. Doug was unresponsive and his pulse had disappeared, his face was turning blue — they only had minutes before he would die.

Caitlin Cluff didn’t know she would meet her heroes on November 11, 2006, but when she suddenly felt faint and collapsed on the floor, Sarah Bunn and Chantelle Cordon, her two classmates at the Freemont High School in Plain City, Utah, had the courage to take action to save her life. Startled when Caitlin collapsed, they immediately sprang into action and began CPR while other bystanders called 9-1-1. Luckily, Sarah was experienced in CPR, having assisting her mother in CPR training classes many times. She and Chantelle took turns doing rescue breaths and chest compressions until a health teacher and a security guard appeared and took over.

Quick response by members of a pick-up basketball team and a school janitor saved David Belkin after his cardiac arrest in February 2007. The 65-year-old lawyer, who’d been pronounced in perfect health by his doctor nine days earlier, was playing a Sunday morning half-court game in an elementary school gym in Honesdale, Pa., when he collapsed. One of the other players, an emergency physician, tried to find Belkin’s pulse and couldn’t. Aware that the school district had outfitted each campus in the Poconos mountains community with an AED, the doctor started chest compressions and shouted for teammates to find the device. While one player called 9-1-1, another found the janitor, who rushed the AED to Belkin’s side. After just one shock, Belkin’s heart was beating again. “Did we win?” he asked when he awakened moments later. At the hospital, doctors installed a tiny internal defibrillator in his chest.