News

CPR Recipient Thankful for Gift of Life

Amanda Garrett

12/25/2015

Dec. 25--COVENTRY TWP. -- Joanne Priest felt the stranger's ribs bending beneath the weight of her hands every time she pushed.

And it sounded like someone cracking knuckles.

"Oh no," Priest worried. "What if I'm doing this wrong?"

The lifeless, silver-haired woman beneath her looked so small, so fragile.

Priest had never performed CPR. She didn't want to hurt the stranger she was trying to help.

But Priest knew she was the woman's only hope. If she stopped compressions and waited for an ambulance, the chances of the woman surviving would plummet.

This is what unfolded on the side of the road Nov. 19 in Coventry Township. It's a story of faith, community and the gifts we give each other, gifts we often never expect or even ask for, but gifts that sometimes change -- or even save -- a life.

Walking for health

Mary Ott started walking the neighborhood around St. Francis de Sales Parish after what she refers to as her "first heart episode."

It happened 30 years ago. She and her husband, Phillip, were middle-aged then. Phillip had a painting business. Mary took care of the books. And together, they raised seven children.

People depended on Mary Ott, and she wanted to be there for them. Walking, she hoped, was the exercise she needed to keep her heart strong.

Five days a week, every week, she plodded the nearby blacktop streets of tidy ranches and bungalows that were mostly built by parishioners like the Otts who wanted to live close to St. Francis de Sales.

Ott, 74 now, always carried a rosary with her and used the 3.5-to-6-mile journey to meditate on the Catholic mysteries of faith, such as the birth of Jesus and the Resurrection.

She also prayed.

Ott didn't know everyone who lived along her exercise route --and many of the people changed over the years -- but on every walk, she said a prayer for the people who lived in each house she passed.

"Even though you don't know all the neighbors and what their problems might be, Jesus had problems, we all have problems," Ott said.

Nov. 19 started off no differently.

It was warm for November, 63 degrees. Sometime after 3 p.m., she slipped her phone into the pocket of her windbreaker and grabbed one of her 40 rosaries, a silver strand that shines gold in the sun.

She passed her flower beds, filled with tiger lilies and irises, tucked away for winter. She passed her church. She passed dozens of houses, asking God to have mercy on the souls of each person who lived inside.

About 2.5 miles into her walk, Ott felt something strange in her chest. It didn't hurt. It didn't feel like what she thought a heart attack might. But something was wrong.

"Please," Ott said to herself. "Please, guardian angel, get me home."

Neighbors nearby

Don Schindewolf was on his lawn tractor picking up leaves in his yard when he noticed a woman walking along the street begin to stagger.

She stumbled a few feet, grabbed hold of a mailbox and then took a swig of water from a bottle before toddling haphazardly forward.

Schindewolf suspected the woman was in trouble, but he couldn't run to help. At 84, Schindewolf knew the John Deere could carry him faster than his legs, so he motored off to the rescue.

When he turned the corner onto Hyfield Avenue, he saw the woman slowly collapse in a driveway.

"It was almost as if she was laying down to take a nap," Schindewolf said.

Just then, a neighbor, John Jatich, 32, pulled onto the street heading home from work.

He saw someone's legs sticking out from behind a lawn tractor and wondered why a woman was fixing the lawn mower on the road.

Jatich stopped to see if he could help.

"Do you have a phone," Schindewolf asked him. "Call 911!"

As Jatich called for help, Schindewolf's wife, Fran, showed up. She followed her husband when she saw him leave the yard. Now she saw where he was headed. A woman lay unconscious by his lawn tractor. She was turning blue.

"She needs CPR," said Fran, 82, who retired from Barberton Citizen's Hospital (now part of Summa Health). Years ago, Fran would have performed CPR herself. She had taken CPR classes once as a Girl Scout leader and then again as part of her hospital job.

But arthritis had crept into her hands, and now she couldn't do what needed to be done. At that moment, she saw a next-door neighbor backing out of her driveway and asked: "Do you know CPR?"

'Stayin' Alive'

Joanne Priest always wanted to be a nurse, but her grade-point average was two-tenths of a point too low to get into nursing school.

That seemed like a lifetime ago. Priest, 56, now worked as a special event coordinator in parking at the University of Akron.

She learned CPR decades ago, but let her certification expire and hadn't thought about it until two weeks before.

Her husband, Roger, works as a team leader at Giant Eagle Market District in Green. In November, as part of his job, he learned CPR.

Over dinner, he told Priest that CPR training had changed. Blowing air into the lungs was no longer necessary. It's more important to do chest compressions -- hard and fast.

To keep time, CPR instructors advise singing the Bee Gees song Stayin' Alive, pressing down with the beat of the disco classic.

All of that flooded Priest's mind when the group of strangers at the end of her driveway asked for her help.

Priest hesitated, but parked, knelt next to the unconscious woman and used her fingertips to find her sternum.

"Let's do this," Priest told herself, starting an internal pep talk. "Once I start, I cannot stop."

All the fear and panic that surrounded Priest faded.

"What a gorgeous day this is," Priest thought as she laced her fingers and pressed her palm into the stranger's chest.

Looking for a pulse

Help is on the way, a 911 dispatcher assured John Jatich, who was pacing now on the street with his phone. Does anyone there know CPR, the dispatcher asked.

Most times, no one does. Every year, about 359,000 people in the U.S. experience cardiac arrest and only about 32 percent of friends, family or passersby perform CPR even though it can triple the chance of survival.

Jatich told the dispatcher a woman had already started compressions. The dispatcher, through Jatich, asked if the woman wanted help counting.

"No," Priest said loudly, now taking charge of the scene.

"Get her head, get her head," Joanne hollered to Fran Schindewolf.

Schindewolf tilted back the unconscious woman's head to make sure her airway was open.

The unconscious woman, whose skin had been blue was slowly gaining an unhealthy-looking beige color.

Priest checked her pulse.

It was there, but weak and the blue undertone started creeping back.

Priest continued compressions. Over the coming minutes, Priest would find and lose the woman's pulse again.

When Coventry Township rescuers pulled up, they asked who the woman was. The neighbors looked at each other and then said, "We don't know."

Priest began shaking as they lifted the woman onto a gurney and into an ambulance. If the woman was going to make it, she figured the ambulance would speed away, lights and sirens blaring.

But there it sat idling, doors closed.

Priest headed into her home to phone work and tell them she was going to be late. She then posted this on Facebook:

"OMG -- I just did CPR for 12 minutes with only two elderly neighbors helping me. Bless them! We do not know who this woman is that walks our neighborhood...I got a pulse twice, then lost her. Crushed."

A few minutes later, she left for work. The ambulance was gone, but Coventry Fire Medic and Inspector Brian Cyphert was there packing up.

Joanne wanted to ask if the woman survived, but she could only stammer.

"She's OK," Cyphert said. "We've got a pulse and your CPR might have saved her life."

Offering thanks

Six days later, on the eve of Thanksgiving, Mary Ott and her husband visited the Coventry Township fire and rescue station and the homes of all those who helped.

They wanted to say thanks.

Ott remembers nothing about Nov. 19 after she felt something weird in her chest. The next thing she knew she awoke in a hospital. She didn't have a heart attack.

"My heart just stopped beating," Ott said, adding that doctors have since changed her medication to help prevent it from happening again.

On Dec. 16, Coventry fire and rescue workers threw a party for the Otts and many of the people who helped to save Mary Ott.

"A lot of times, we get there and no one's done CPR. We can restart the heart, but neurologically, the damage is done," Brian Cyphert said. "The people we rescued, may live two or three weeks, but they're gone."

To see Mary Ott smiling, talking to friends and family, is a gift, he said.

Joanne Priest, who learned that Mary Ott had been praying for her family every time she passed her house, considered that a gift, too.

And Mary Ott, who planned to make her family's favorite barbecue ribs for Christmas as her seven children and 23 grandchildren gather at her home, she said she received the greatest gift of all: "I'm grateful every day."

Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.