PORT ANGELES — No one saw Al Johnson collapse when he was felled by a heart attack in January while working on the Peninsula College campus in Port Angeles.
The custodian at Peninsula College might not have survived if not for the “perfect storm” of rescuers who discovered him just in time, said Port Angeles Fire Chief Dan McKeen.
Because of the emergency aid he received Jan. 7, Johnson was back at work three months later March 28.
“There aren’t even studies done on the survival rates of unwitnessed cardiac events,” McKeen said.
“That is how rare it is.”
After six minutes, the chances of survival are minimal, he said.
Student Andy Pierrot was the first to find Johnson.
He summoned college staff member Allan Steigerwald.
Then, Josh Pozgay showed up and sought Johnson’s pulse. He could not detect one.
Campus Security Officer Nate Thompson phoned 9-1-1 and ran to another building for an automatic external defibrillator — or AED — which delivers a therapeutic dose of electrical current to change an irregular heart rhythm to a normal one.
Meanwhile, Steigerwald started chest compressions to get the blood flowing.
All of the saviors received recognition from the Port Angeles City Council at Tuesday night’s meeting.
“If you remove any of the people that were there, it could have been a very different outcome,” Thompson said.
Johnson doesn’t remember any of it — or any of the day that precedes it.
“Jan. 7, 2011, is a day that I don’t remember,” he said.
“I got cleaned up, had lunch, went to pay a bill, parked, walked up to the custodial closet — but I don’t remember doing any of that.
“The doctor said that I will not remember it.”
He had intermittent pain during the months before the heart attack, but he attributed it to heartburn, since he wasn’t aware of having any heart trouble, and cut spicy foods and catsup from his diet.
“The last time I was at the doctor was some 40 years ago,” the now-61-year-old said.
The first thing he remembers is waking up intubated — with an apparatus to help him breathe down his throat.
His first act upon awakening apparently was to take a swing at a nurse at his bedside.
“I popped her pretty good,” Johnson said.
“They say that is pretty common, for people to wake up swinging.”
His heart attack was on a Friday. On Sunday, he phoned Thompson.
“I called and said, ‘Hey, Nate, I had a heart attack,’” Johnson said.
Thompson said: “I told him, ‘Uh, yeah, I know. I had to shock you.’”
When Thompson put the defibrillator on Johnson, it detected that he was having a heart attack and shocked him.
“I’ve never seen anything like that when it shocked him and his body went up like that,” said student Jennifer Frazier, a friend of Johnson who helped direct students away from him while emergency procedures were used on him.
McKeen said the chances for Johnson’s survival were small because no one witnessed him having the heart attack but emphasized that life-saving pieces were already in place when Johnson fell ill.
“The community had those pieces in place before the event even happened,” he said.
One of the first key things in place is that the hospital has emergency room physicians, McKeen said.
“Everyone assumes that every hospital will have them, but 40 years ago, it wasn’t always the case,” he said.
“Another thing is that just over 25 years ago, the community leaders decided to put a paramedics system in place.
“More recently, the community has been donating AEDs throughout the community in areas where people congregate.”
In 2007, the Port Angeles Rotary Club donated the AED that saved Johnson’s life to Peninsula College.
The Olympic Medical Foundation has been locating AEDs throughout the community as well, McKeen said.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
