Nov 16, 2009 6:25 pm US/Central
20-Year-Old CPR Lesson Pays Off For Local Hero
LINCOLNWOOD, Ill. (Sun-Times Media Wire) ―
Russ Villano took a one-hour CPR course 20 years ago, but that was enough the life of an elderly Chicago man, Pioneer Press is reporting.
"There was a guy outside the main door of Dominick's down on the ground," he said. "I saw a couple of people walking by, but it didn't look right. I thought, 'Maybe somebody should do something about it. Maybe I should do it'," he said.
Villano, a 20-year resident of Morton Grove who recently moved to unincorporated Glenview, has been the road-service mechanic for Grossinger Cadillac in Lincolnwood for decades. He was cutting across the parking lot of the Lincolnwood Dominick's on Nov. 6 on the way to pick up a car at the dealer's auxiliary lot nearby when he noticed the man lying on the sidewalk.
He ran up to the prone figure and found an elderly man with an ashen face, cold skin, open mouth and blankly-staring eyes. He wasn't breathing, and had only the faintest trace of a pulse.
Villano went to work. "When I took (the course) it was two breaths and 5 pumps. Now it's two breaths and 30 pumps."
How did he know about the change? "I watch TV," he laughed.
Between breaths, he ordered a bystander to call 911, he said. "They tell you in the course to pick somebody. So I saw a lady with a phone and I said 'Tag, you're it.' "
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation often fails,and Villano knows it. "But I went through three cycles,and he started breathing. It was the neatest thing."
Just then, Lincolnwood Fire Dept. paramedics arrived and took over. "I got up and walked away," Villano said. "But I was a nervous wreck the rest of the day."
He had no idea what happened to the man whose chest he pounded in front of the grocery store at 6810 McCormick Blvd. "I didn't whether I saved his life or just kept him alive to die later," he said.
The man's still alive and on the way to recovery after the implantation of a pacemaker and an automatic defibrillator at St. Francis Hospital, Lincolnwood Fire Chief Mike Hansen said.
Paramedics rpicked up the 83-year-old West Rogers Park man who was barely breathing after a cardiac incident. He "was in the right place at the right time," Hansen said. "He got a guardian angel and good EMS help after that."
Villano said he's gotten some recognition at work in the service department -- and some kidding, too.
"I get a lot of 'Hey, CPR this'," he laughed.
--Pioneer Press
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2009. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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