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Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Deputy John Durbin |
Spotsylvania County Deputy John Durbin worked for the rescue squad for 10 years before he took a job at the Sheriff's Office.
But in all the time he spent in the ambulance, he never experienced anything like Monday morning.
In the early hours Monday, he saved a man's life.
Durbin was working night patrol, driving down Courthouse Road toward Fredericksburg when he saw the car behind him flashing its lights about 1 a.m.
He pulled over into the Extreme Power Sports parking lot.
So did the other car.
As he walked up to the passenger window, he heard a woman's voice.
"Please help my husband. He's having a heart attack."
Durbin said he immediately pulled the nonresponsive man from the passenger seat.
"I grabbed him by both arms, and he had no pulse and he wasn't breathing," Durbin said of the 59-year-old Maryland man.
Durbin ran to his patrol car for an automated external defibrillator, which is used to send a shock into someone experiencing heart failure.
"I was just thinking, 'I have to help him,'" he said.
Just as Durbin prepared to send the jolt, fellow deputy M. Haymaker arrived to assist, but defibrillation was already in process.
"He had a pulse after the first shock," Durbin said.
He said Haymaker helped him to roll the man onto his side. They watched as he began gasping for air on his own.
Within minutes, the man was talking with deputies.
"I've never seen anything like it," he said.
He said in all his time as a member of the rescue squad, he never saw someone without a pulse respond to the AED's first shock.
The Maryland man is recovering at Mary Washington Hospital from what turned out to be a massive heart attack, Durbin said, but he's in stable condition.
Durbin said yesterday that he hadn't gotten a chance to visit yet, but hoped to soon.
He said Monday, as he waited for the rescue squad to arrive on scene, the man was mostly just confused at what was happening.
But his wife, Durbin said, was just thankful he was alive.
"She just kept telling me 'thank you' for being there," he said.
He said the man's wife told him he'd been having chest pains and right-shoulder pains Sunday, Durbin said.
He woke up in the middle of the night at the family's Lake Anna vacation home, nauseous. So his wife decided to take him to the hospital.
But he went unconscious before they could make it.
"I'm just glad I was in the right place at the right time," Durbin said.
Ellen Biltz: 540/374-5424
Email: ebiltz@freelancestar.com
