Using her clinical knowledge and experience as a clinical nurse on Founders 12, Erin McCormick saved Gerald Huffaman's life..
Saving a person’s life was the last thing on Erin McCormick’s mind as she sat in a movie theater with her mom. Yet, not 15 minutes into the film, she found herself doing just that.
It started when she heard Gerald Huffman – the person sitting beside her – making odd noises and not responding to his wife’s attempts to arouse him. Using her phone’s light, Erin assessed Gerald and found him unresponsive and limp. And she couldn’t find a pulse. Without even thinking about it, her clinical knowledge and experience kicked in. She carefully lowered him to the floor and then, after calling out for someone to get help and dialing 9-1-1 herself, she immediately started to perform CPR on the man. “I just went on auto-pilot.”
She shocked him twice with a mall security AED brought to her, continuing her compressions in between, until the EMS arrived and took over. “My mom told me I worked on him for over 20 minutes.” By the time Gerald was brought out of the theater, he had a pulse. “The paramedics said he was talking en route to the hospital,” said Rebecca Lopacinski, his daughter.
Rebecca called Erin later that night from the local hospital where he was brought and told her he was awake and talking to them. “The ED doctors were surprised I was so cognizant. They didn’t expect me to talk with them,” he said. But, because Erin had acted so quickly, Gerald’s brain suffered no damage from loss of oxygen or the blood supply.
Gerald is recovering at home now – with a defibrillator in place – and very grateful to be around to see his children and grandchildren. He said he had no “warning signs” before his heart went into cardiac arrest.
He called Erin the following Wednesday and thanked her profusely. “He said to let him know if I needed anything!” she said.
“I get emotional whenever I think about it,” he said. “How do you thank someone for saving your life?”