A 58-year-old resident thanked Hermosa Beach firefighter-paramedics for restarting his heart and saving his life, exchanging handshakes and hugs with them during a brief ceremony honoring the firefighters at City Hall.
“It is with gratitude that I am here with these fellows,” said the man, who did not offer his name, referring to Capt. James Crawford, engineer Aaron Marks, firefighters Aaron Bush, Sheldon Osekowsky and Jimmy Bruccoleri, and ambulance operators and fire interns Anthony Rosas and Yasha Vand.
The man had suffered a heart attack from a completely blocked artery when the firefighters rushed to his home.
Treatment and medications were begun immediately, and notification was made early to Little Company of Mary Medical Center, where staff members summoned a cardiologist and a cardiac catheterization team while their patient was en route.
His heart stopped beating 30 seconds from the hospital. Bush, alone with the patient in the back of the ambulance, began CPR while preparing the man for defibrillation, while Bruccoleri made a cell phone call to notify hospital personnel of the change in their patient’s condition.
The man regained a pulse shortly after arrival in the emergency room and was taken to a catheterization lab. A stent was inserted and a clot blocking an artery was removed.
At the ceremony, the man said he suffered symptoms “unfamiliar with anything you might imagine” on the night of March 28. He woke his wife and said, “I’m in trouble, you better call 911.”
He said firefighters swarmed to the rescue with “amazing professionalism.”
“At that point I was going downhill pretty quickly,” he said.
He lost consciousness in the ambulance, and later heard from a doctor and nurse just how close his call had been.
“So many things had to go right for me to be speaking here tonight,” he said.
“Short of what these fellows did, nothing else would have mattered,” he said.
He has gone home and back to work, and he said he is doing well with “very little heart damage.”
Mayor Jeff Duclos presented the firefighters certificates of commendation under the city seal.
“The combination of a prompt response, teamwork, rapid assessment, and recognition that the patient was having an acute myocardial infarction, treatment, and transport saved this patient’s life without a doubt,” said one of the nurses at Little Company last month. “I rarely see a scenario like this work so smoothly and patient outcome turn out the way this one did.” ER
