Group of first responders, nurse jump into action to save woman’s life in Cottage Grove
It was an urgent emergency call.
“Obviously, it was in the middle of an intersection,” recalls Cottage Grove firefighter/paramedic Riley Erickson. “So, things can be very chaotic, right?”
Last Friday, just days before Christmas, an 84-year-old woman collapsed at the intersection of 80th Street and Hadley Avenue.
It was 4:13 p.m. and Vickie Holtz, a registered nurse, was just leaving her job at a nearby nursing home.
“I was getting ready to turn on a very busy street, and I noticed a lady had fallen,” she says. “I noticed she wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse and so I started CPR, and then an off-duty paramedic for Cottage Grove came and helped me.”
That off-duty paramedic is Chris Vierling, who was driving his wife and son to hockey practice.
“My wife had actually noticed that somebody was in trouble,” he remembers. “And she said, ‘Chris, Chris, Chris, somebody needs help, somebody needs help.'”
So, he did what first responders do: run to the scene and continue CPR while making sure 911 was alerted and asking someone to find an automated external defibrillator.
“So, when I initially showed up, she was pulseless,” Vierling says. “I didn’t have an AED, so I didn’t know the rhythm that she was in. That’s when CPR started.”
On this day, time was on the woman’s side.
“We were essentially, it turned out, two-and-a-half minutes from where the cardiac arrest had occurred,” Erickson notes.
His ambulance was close by and equipped with an AED, which analyzes the heart and delivers an electric shock to help restore a normal rhythm.
“My goal was to have them continue CPR in the intersection,” Erickson explains. “I’ll put our AED on her and see if there’s a shockable rhythm, and if there is, we’ll shock her and then we’re going to move her out of the intersection.”
At a time when seconds count, it worked.
Erickson says for every minute in cardiac arrest, a patient’s chance for survival, with their nervous system intact, decreases by 10%.
The woman’s life was saved by emergency responders who jumped into action and were at the right place at the right time.
“It is a wonderful feeling to be able to help someone, it is,” Holtz says.
“It was meaningful for me just to see it all kind of come together,” Vierling adds. “And somebody was able to spend extra time with their family over Christmas.”
In this case, the gift of time was also the gift of life.
At last check, the woman remains in the hospital and is being visited by her loved ones.
“They got to spend more time with their family,” Erickson declares. “That’s why we do this profession. So that hopefully we can help people and make them go on to live healthy lives.”