Santa Ana : Golfer’s CPR Saves Heart Attack Victim

A 22-year-old Anaheim man was called a hero Wednesday after helping to revive a 68-year-old golfer who suffered a heart attack at a golf course and was considered “clinically dead” for several minutes, authorities said.

Santa Ana Fire Department Capt. Gary Bidgood said Julius Montgomery of Garden Grove was alive Wednesday because of quick thinking and the correct use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques by his rescuer, Samuel Nichols.

Nichols said he was playing at the Riverview Golf Course with friends shortly before 3 p.m. when he noticed a group of people ahead of him on the course “rushing around.”

“I looked up and there he (was) lying down. I first thought he was hit by a golf ball. They all were rushing around. My partner and I went sprinting down there,” Nichols said.

“They said, ‘He’s not breathing; he has no pulse.’ I shoved them out of the way, jumped on him, got him breathing, got a pulse, and he came out of it.”

Bidgood said a retired Fire Department captain eventually took over for Nichols until paramedics arrived.

“We did our complete CPR job on him, and by the time we took him to the hospital, he was talking to us,” Bidgood said.

“(Nichols’) initial CPR treatment was probably the main contributing factor that kept this patient alive. . . . (Montgomery) was clinically dead with no heart beat,” Bidgood said.

Dick Ries, a golfer who witnessed Nichols’ CPR efforts and called paramedics, called Nichols’ performance “fantastic.”

“A lot of people know CPR, but this man took command, he took over,” Ries said.

Nichols said he believes that he performed CPR for 10 minutes and that Montgomery seemed “probably about as close to death as you can get.”

Nichols, who said he learned CPR in a lifeguard class when he was 12 years old, described his own performance as just a “natural reaction.”

Montgomery was reported in stable condition at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange Wednesday, fire officials said.