»RUSTY: Hi, this is Rusty from Pickleball Channel. And what you are about to see
can literally make a difference between life or death.
We have heard story after story of how pickleball players' lives have been saved
by fellow pickleball players or friends or neighbors who performed
CPR or used an AED. Now, as you're about to see, this story
is extremely close and personal to us.
We truly hope that you will be inspired to learn to do CPR so that
lives can be saved and a difference can be made. Thank you very, very much for
watching. ♪♪ music fades ♪♪
»RUSTY: I'm Rusty Howes, and, as a lot of people might know watching this, I'm the
executive producer of Pickleball Channel. But usually I'm not on
this side of the camera being interviewed, I'm hosting or interviewing other people.
There's a group of people that I play with in my community in Glendale, CA, and we've become friends.
And I just play whenever I can, and it's just fantastic.
»JEROME: My name is Jerome Collins. I met Rusty, I was
at the YMCA. Marshall Pura brought him up to the roof, and he
played pickleball with us. And we've known each other 2 or 3 years. When I think of Rusty,
I get emotional because we're really close. I think of him as
my brother because he saved my life, and I'll never forget that.
»RUSTY: Because I'm busy, I don't get to play as much as I like. But on one particular Saturday,
things changed last minute and I talked to my wife. I said, "Oh, I think I'm going to try to go play pickleball."
I'm driving in my car and I was just going to go to where I always normally went.
But last minute I thought, just popped into my head randomly, I'm like, "Hey, let me see where
Jerome's playing at. Let me see if there's anybody playing at that other place that I've never been to."
»JEROME: On May 29th, I woke up, got my stuff, and I walked to the pickleball court
and I started playing pickleball, a few games. »AIDA: My name is Aida Badalian.
I live in Glendale and my hobby is playing pickleball.
Jerome is a very friendly guy. He's like a comedian. We enjoy playing
with him. We like him very much. We tease him all the time. He teases us.
We had been playing pickleball that morning. We started around 9 o'clock.
I think Jerome played about 2 games and then he wanted to rest. Then he started
collecting the balls. But while he was collecting the balls, he fell down.
»JEROME: And that's basically
all I remember. ♪♪ tender piano music ♪♪
»RUSTY: And then, next thing I know, I look over and someone's saying something and
yelling, and Jerome's lying on his back in the corner by the building. And you realize something's wrong,
and I just ran over. And someone's yelling, "Call 911!" And I get there,
and he's gasping for air. And then, [vocal release] he lets out
his last breath. »MELINE: I was actually at the front counter, so one of the pickleball gentlemen
kind of ran and said, "There's a man fell down. He's unconscious. Call
911!" So as I'm calling 911, I'm with the operator and they said
we have the ambulance on their way. So I put down the phone, and I ran outside. And at
that moment, Jerome was collapsed on the ground. »RUSTY: So, I just
start doing CPR. I'm doing CPR, I'm doing mouth to mouth, and [inhale], and he comes back.
And then all of a sudden [vocal release], he goes
out again. »AIDA: And we were all confused. We were all terrified. We were all panicking.
»RUSTY: So I just start again, and I'm pushing, pushing and compressing and compressing and compressing and
doing the whole thing, and he doesn't come back. And I keep going, and it just seems like an eternity because
he had taken another breath before, but now he's not.
»AIDA: The only person who knew what to do at the day of the incident was Rusty.
»RUSTY: It had been decades since I had actually taken a CPR class.
But I was all going back to decades ago classes that I had taken.
»JEROME: But you know what? That's him, that's Rusty anyhow. He's a
guy that likes to help people. And so it doesn't surprise me that he was right
there, Johnny-on-the-spot, when I fell down. He was the only one who knew CPR
and he just happened to be there that day. »RUSTY: And then I just start working
and working and I'm thinking, "Are they coming? When are the firemen coming?" And someone's like, "They're on
their way. »CAPTAIN: My name's Captain Chris Jernegan. I'm the captain on Engine 22
here at the Glendale Fire Department. We got a call for a person down at Pacific Park. Our engine
was in the area, so we were the first to respond. Upon our arrival, we went and found
Jerome who was down in the corner there in the park by the building, and
we saw looks like a bystander that was doing CPR.
»RUSTY: And they take over. And I step back and I see them. And one person has a bag, and
there's three people working on him at the same time. And they're checking him, and they inject him with some of the adrenaline or the
epinephrine, and then they shock him with the AED. And then they're
working on him again. And it doesn't seem to work. And they do it again, and it doesn't seem to work.
»MELINE: And we're all just kind of anxiously looking and seeing what's going to happen.
Is he going to, are we going to get a heartbeat? »CAPTAIN: A lot of things are happening at the exact same
time because we only have a small amount of time to effect a change in that
person. »RUSTY: And there's this moment where I'm thinking, oh my gosh, he's dead.
But they're paying attention now, and then all of a sudden they realize they have a
heartbeat. They have enough. »CAPTAIN: So many times we go on these calls and the person's down and we
find them without any CPR. So what that does is, it limits the amount
of opportunity we have to effect a positive change. »DR. SIMS: I'm Dr. Jessica Sims.
I've been practicing emergency medicine for over 15 years.
I work here now at AltaMed as a regional medical director, and I'm on the board of directors
for the American Heart Association. Something like 350,000
people in the United States suffer from cardiac arrest each year. CPR
generally doesn't reverse cardiac arrest, but when the heart stops,
no blood is moving. And your brain needs blood moving all the time. It can only survive a few
minutes without any blood circulating. So by doing CPR, you extend
the period of time that the medical facility has to really get things moving
again so that all the tissues can be profused as they should be. »CAPTAIN: In this case in
particular, what we had was Rusty doing quality citizen CPR before we got
there. That really opened up the window of opportunity for our guys to get in there
and provide the more definitive care which resulted in the more positive outcome for
Jerome. »RUSTY: But he still was in absolutely critical condition. »CAPTAIN: So we get
to the hospital, we transfer care over to the emergency room staff because ultimately this patient's definitive
care is going to rest with the emergency room physician who's hopefully going to diagnose the reason
that patient went into full arrest. »RUSTY: He had no local family. And it was just
me at the time, and so while I was there, I was calling everybody. And I'm trying
to find something to do. I needed to find something to do because I wanted to try to help. And then it got to a point where
all I could do was wait. Wait and see if he lives. Wait and see if he dies.
The weird part of it is, when I was a freshman in high school, one night my older brother
got a phone call. He's on the phone and then he kind of goes quiet.
And then he hangs up the phone and he looks at me, and he says, "I think Dad might have had a heart attack."
There's this moment in between when you know, but you don't know, right?
And then the phone rings from something else. But
everything becomes about that. Right? You're just waiting. And
my dad ended up dying.
But I had kind of flashbacks to that with Jerome because he's
in the hospital, and everytime my cell phone rang or everytime something
rang, I was expecting to hear that
he's dead. But I never got
a call that said he's dead. I got a call that says he's alive and his heart's beating.
»JEROME: You know, it's
amazing on that day. You may call it divine intervention or not, but Rusty hardly
comes to Pacific that often. I mean, it's once in a while. But that day
that he came, he was the only one who knew CPR. I was very lucky.
I was lucky he was there. »RUSTY: It was touch and go for a little bit. He kind of
had some amnesia, but the pickleball community totally came in. They were visiting him,
they were supporting him. And all these people, the doctors, the hospital, and the pickleball
players, made a difference in an amazing recovery. »JEROME: And every day
one of my pickleball players, they would come and they brought
their families. You know, they bring you the usual fruit.
Don't bring me flowers because I can't eat flowers. »AIDA: The pickleball community
rallied around Jerome so nicely. Like even
at the hospital, they were asking us, "Who is this guy?
Is he a celebrity?" And we were
saying, "No. He's a celebrity between us. We play pickleball together
and we are like a second family to him." »RUSTY: When I went back to the park
after it happened, I was hesitant to go back. And I went to the corner,
and I remember I wanted to see the corner, instead of a corner
of death, I wanted it to be a corner of life. I kind of went in and I kind of
claimed that corner as, instead of it being a place of
darkness, you know, it's the beginning of this great thing happened.
You know, he didn't die. And he had a second chance on life, and a whole new chapter
can begin because of it. »MELINE: So now, after a year
later, we still see Jerome. He comes in. He's smiling. He's continuing to play.
»JEROME: When I died I got to see the other side, and so I can
face life a little bit easier and not be afraid
anymore. »AIDA: And now Jerome is still with us and playing with us and giving us
hard time. »RUSTY: When people are saying, "You saved his life" and "You're
a hero", at first I was really uncomfortable with that. There were so many hands
that were a part of it. »CAPTAIN: It starts off with our bystander, Rusty, recognizing a
situation and not being apprehensive and realizing this person needs help. Then the
fire department comes in and does their part. And then the emergency room does their part, which is
just as vital. And collectively with all those people involved is the reason we had
such a positive outcome and Jerome was able to walk out of the hospital on his own power. That doesn't
happen all the time. But when we get one of those types of situations, when we get someone to walk out
on their own two feet, that's a big day. That lifts us up. »RUSTY: But I didn't want to do this
video at all. I was really hesitant. And it's actually taken a year. The only reason
I'm willing to do it is because somebody else, somewhere
in the country or the world, from hearing about how much a difference CPR
can mean the difference between life or death, we can make a difference. »FIRE CHIEF: My name is Greg
Fish. I'm the fire chief of the Glendale Fire Department. We have a saying in the fire service where
"time is tissue". And the reason why we have that saying is because after about
5 minutes, the human brain starts to break down because of lack of oxygen. And
it's really important that the bystander take the initiative and circulate
that oxygen to the brain so that that brain does not die. We can't do that
because we average about 4 minutes and 20 seconds from the time of dispatch until the time
we arrive on scene. So it's really, really, really important that we get someone with
bystander CPR to initiate that CPR, to initiate that circulation
within the body, so that when we do get on scene, we have a fighting chance. »MELINE: Most definitely
CPR can save lives. We saw it happen with Jerome.
»DR. SIMS: Everyone should learn CPR. It can save the life of someone you
care about, someone who lives with you. Or also a stranger, a
bystander. »CAPTAIN: Learning how to do CPR is one of the easiest things and one of the most
impactful ways that you can help your fellow human beings. The science actually is in
the favor of only hands-on. We don't really want you to do mouth-to-mouth CPR. We really
just need you to get involved with your hands only. And those ten minutes, just taking ten minutes
out of your day to go learn hands-only CPR, you can have a tremendous
impact on someone else's life. »AIDA: When Jerome collapsed, that was the most
terrifying experience for me. It was an eye-opening day for me,
and the first thing I did after the incident, I tried to find a
place to take the training for the CPR, and that's what I did.
And within a week, I took a CPR training. And I'm going to do it again this year just to
refresh my memory. »JEROME: That day Rusty did CPR on me, and he was my hero.
But anybody can do CPR. Anybody can
be a hero. ♪♪ inspiring music ♪♪
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♪♪ tender piano music ♪♪
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