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Ex-medic rescues local man
By DAVE SHELTON
Article published on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 |
CLEARWATER – Michael “Zeke” Ohono was one of the paramedics who poured through the piles of rubble that was the World Trade Center more than five years ago. A paramedic from Upper Deerfield, N.J., he answered the call to risk his life in the smoldering debris.
Now, he’s a mechanic at a local truck stop but he hasn’t forgotten his lifesaving skills. On Jan. 16, Ohono was at work at the S&M Truck World on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard.
Two men had just delivered boxes of auto parts when Ohono said he heard a commotion at about 8:45 a.m. coming from the garage’s parking lot.
“I heard one of the men say ‘He isn’t breathing’,” and Ohono rushed to the delivery truck to see what was happening. He found the driver unresponsive.
“He wasn’t breathing and there was no pulse,” said Ohono, who quickly pulled the man from his truck. He said the driver’s helper had realized his friend was in trouble as they pulled away from the truck equipment business, and he was able to lock up the truck’s emergency brake, causing its engine to stall.
Ohono reached into the cab and pulled the driver from the truck and laid him on the pavement. The victim’s name is being withheld by authorities and is described only as a man in his 50s.
Hundreds of times during his five years as a New Jersey emergency medical technician, Ohono had performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He immediately recognized that this truck driver needed assistance and he didn’t hesitate.
For more than five minutes, he said, he pumped the man’s chest and blew life-saving air into his lungs. When Clearwater Fire Department paramedics arrived, they immediately administered an electric shock via a defibrillator and the victim’s heart was restored to a nearly normal rhythm.
“At that point I just stepped back to let them (the paramedics) work on him and I went back to work,” Ohono said.
“They were able to get a “Return of Spontaneous Circulation” (a detectable pulse),” wrote Fire Department spokesman Beth Daly in an e-mail.
“The patient was transported to a local hospital where he was awake and talking.
“The quick response by firefighters and the citizen (Ohono), along with the use of the defibrillator, helped save the patient’s life.”
Ohono said he didn’t do anything heroic. As a trained paramedic, he was just lucky to have been available when this man’s life was in danger, he said. He said he would like to see the man, whom he knew as the deliveryman, again but in private.
“I don’t want any public involvement,” he said. “This is just between me and him.”
Ohono said he is unmarried and lives behind the truck repair shop.
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Article published on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007
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