Angela Bero is a clinical coordinator for St. Joseph’s Physicians Cardiology. Her wife, Heather Shimer-Bero, is the nursing clinical director for women and infants at St. Joseph’s Health. They recently received the Heart Saver Hero Award from the American Heart Association for saving a woman’s life while they were traveling for vacation last month.
“We ended up doing 3 and a half rounds of CPR and defibrillating three times. She actually woke up, said her name, where she was,” said Bero.
The AED defibrillator was given to them. It was located on site at the airport. She and Shimer-Bero took turns giving CPR and, incidentally, a retired Town of Clay fireman who was traveling assisted them.
“And that’s the first thing you want to do, is get a shock into them, to reset the rhythm," said Shimer-Bero.
“It’s great because it walks you right through it. Anybody can do this, you just have to listen, put the pads on and let the machine do the work," Bero said.
“I think our expertise helped us to do what we needed to do, but it’s still such an incredible feeling outside the hospital because all we had were our hands and the AED. That was it,” Shimer-Bero said.
It took about eight minutes to revive the woman's life. The couple said they're happy they were at the right place at the right time.
“I’m hoping, once-in-a-lifetime thing that we did at the airport,” Bero said.
Greg Riley, a branch manger at Key Bank in Syracuse, knows firsthand the importance of bystander CPR because it saved his life. Almost two years ago, his life flashed before his eyes.
“So I reached into the cabinet to grab a manila folder and all of a sudden, I passed out,” Riley recalled. “There were two people in the branch at the time that were CPR-trained, and they immediately came over and started the CPR within a matter of seconds.”
He now has a pacemaker and defibrillator placed inside him that can help save his life if he goes into cardiac arrest again. However, Riley said he probably would not be here today if it wasn’t for those two bystanders taking immediate action.
“Normally, you don’t get out of it without broken ribs, and I was able to get out unscathed. Other than this new friendly device that has been implanted to save my life going forward,” Riley noted.
He's thankful for a second chance to live.
“There are no guarantees going forward, so you just embrace each day and try to make the most of it,” Riley said.
Riley said the bank is in the process of trying to create formal CPR training.