Bob Hope Airport honors three credited with saving man’s life after heart attack
A trio of Southwest Airlines employees at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank were praised this week for their quick-thinking and life-saving actions earlier this month.
Stacee Snow, Carla Cisneros and J.D. Martinez were honored during a meeting of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority board on Monday with certificates from airfield officials and special coins from the airport police chief recognizing their efforts that saved the life of a 69-year-old man.
Just before 9 a.m. on Nov. 3, as Southwest flights were coming from and going to Oakland, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Sacramento, a man suffered a heart attack while standing in line at the airline’s ticket counter in Terminal A, said Edward Skvarna, the airport’s chief of police and public safety director.
A call went out on the company’s radio frequency that a customer was having a seizure or heart attack, and Snow snapped into action, grabbing an automatic external defibrillator, or AED, as she hurried to the ticket counter. When she arrived, she found the man was not breathing, had no pulse and his skin had turned blue.
Cisneros was already assisting the man, and Snow began cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, with chest compressions. Martinez ran from Gate A1 and took over CPR while Snow and Cisneros prepared and connected the defibrillator, Skvarna said.
The portable medical device can diagnose and treat life-threatening heart conditions such as cardiac arrest or arrhythmia, using electrical shocks to reestablish a normal heart rhythm. The device is designed to guide even untrained people through the process using step-by-step audio instructions.
Eric Wagner, a firefighter and the emergency medical services coordinator at the airport, said it evaluates a person’s breathing and heart rate before recommending to shock or not. Police and fire vehicles at the airport are equipped with similar devices, Wagner said, and public safety officials had them installed throughout the terminal about five years ago.
The survival rate from sudden cardiac arrest like the man the Southwest employees helped is about 5% to 6%, Wagner said, citing statistics from the American Heart Assn.
However, use of CPR and an AED can double or triple those odds. Unfortunately, he said the big challenge is that many people don’t know the devices are available or they’re afraid to use them.
The AEDs located in the terminal are designed for use by people without any training, Wagner said, and they won’t let a user bypass any of the steps, so they shouldn’t be afraid they’ll do something wrong. It can also lead a user through the steps of CPR and provides an audio rhythm for chest compressions.
People can successfully render aid without any training, Wagner said, if they can “keep their wits ... and listen to what it’s telling [them].” The Southwest employees did an “amazing job,” he said.
After evaluating the man, the device recommended Snow administer a shock.
Skvarna said it’s the first time he recalls that one of the devices made that recommendation. Since 2010, they’ve been used twice by laypeople and twice by airport police, airport officials said. In some cases CPR alone was effective.
“It didn’t appear that CPR was doing any good,” he said. “They’re pretty much flat-lined if it recommends shock.”
After the first shock, the man was revived and began breathing. About a minute later he regained consciousness, Skvarna said, and soon the airport fire and police officials arrived, followed by Burbank police officers.
The man was transported to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and made a complete recovery.
The three employees’ “collectively distinctive accomplishments” and teamwork with the “highest stakes hanging in the balance” saved the man’s life, Skvarna said.
“Nobody knows how they’re going to act [in an emergency],” he said. “To have the presence of mind ... to grab an AED on the way to the call, that was a big deal.”
It was the “sheer quickness” of their use of this device that made the difference in saving the man’s life, said John Scanlon, the airport’s fire chief. He said many airport and airline employees have been trained on the AEDs.
“We hope we don’t ever have to use it again, but we’re very, very proud that we’re prepared,” Scanlon said.
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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com
Twitter: @chadgarland
