The waitress came in, and she said, “Is there a doctor in this group?”

When Kevin Hass, a Chatsworth commercial photographer, took CPR training, he thought he would never use it. But he had a reason to acquire the skill.

I was born in Wisconsin, and my family brought me to California when I was 2 months old. In 1962 my father, mother, brother and I were living in Chatsworth. My father was a dentist.

Being a dentist is a fairly stressful occupation. He had heart problems for many years, and he was heavy, and he smoked. He had been sick for several years and in and out of the hospital.

He was home when it happened. It was right at dinner time. He excused himself from the table before we were done. He went into the next room and we heard choking noises. We went in there, and we found that he was unconscious already. All we could do was call the doctor, because I don’t believe at that time there were paramedics available. Doctors at that time frequently made house calls, so he came out, but it was too late, of course.

In 1983, one of the members of the Optimists Club that I belong to was a physician. He requested that we all take the basic CPR course to be a provider. It didn’t take very much persuading. It seemed like it was a second chance. It was too late to help my father. I thought, now I might have a chance to do something for someone else.

One morning, at about a quarter after 7, I was at a breakfast meeting of the Chatsworth Optimists. I hadn’t been there too long when the waitress came in, and she said, “Is there a doctor in this group?” I asked her, “Why are you looking for a doctor?” She said, “I think somebody is having a heart attack.”

I followed her into an adjacent meeting room. A man was already on his back on the floor. He was a very bad color. The pink color was all gone from his face. They had called the paramedics, but it takes them a few minutes to arrive. If they can get there in four minutes, they’re doing pretty good, but that’s about the cutoff point. After that, there is a chance of brain damage, and after about seven minutes, he would probably be dead anyway.

Immediately, I jumped down to the floor and checked, and he wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t find any pulse. He had a tie on; he was dressed up, so I ripped his shirt off. The first thing I needed to do was put breath in. I found one of his friends and he tilted his head back so I didn’t have to worry about repositioning it every time. I told him how to do it, and he held the head back.

Then I went into doing the compressions. Fifteen compressions and then two breaths. They told me that I did it for about seven minutes. A fire unit came with the paramedic unit. A fireman moved to my side and said he would take over, and he continued CPR until the paramedics had a chance to unpack their instruments.

After I had a chance to take a breather, I was very exhausted. The person came to in the restaurant. He opened up his eyes, and you could tell he was somewhat revived. So I felt a lot better then.

I did receive two letters from the family that I appreciated very much. That’s when I learned that he was conscious, and he got back to where he could recognize people and talk with his family. Friends and family came from all over the country. They had two days to make the journey and talk with him. Then, for some reason he had another arrest in the hospital, and they couldn’t revive him. He lived for two days.

It was a year ago last January when this happened. I don’t think there was quite as much in the news about AIDS as there is now. Just when CPR was becoming fairly widespread, it’s really sad that AIDS had to come up. I don’t know what the answer is, I wish I did. One answer is to find a cure for AIDS.

I would probably use CPR again. I’m sure I would. Sometimes you just have to take a chance, I guess. Everything is a risk, anyway. There are other communicable diseases that you can catch. You can be as careful as you want to be, but there is going to be something somewhere that you can’t avoid. I’m sure I would do it again.