OAKLAND — For a Lafayette man, Thursday marked a happy reunion with four men who saved his life earlier this year.
Just before the Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners meeting, Lafayette resident Steven Kirschner and his wife, Susan Kirschner, were reunited with those men — Oliver Naca, Rainier Escanio, Marc Discipulo and Armil Vertudez — as well as with the emergency responders and airport personnel who jumped into action to defibrillate and transport him after he suffered a heart attack outside the passenger terminal in February.
“It’s great — really, really wonderful,” Kirschner said of meeting the men who had saved his life. “I feel completely fortunate, so lucky.”
“This is a surreal moment,” said Vertudez, one of the men who had helped save Kirschner.
The commissioners, along with officials from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, Oakland Fire Department, Oakland City Council and Southwest Airlines gathered Thursday at the port’s offices to recognize the people involved with the lifesaving rescue, including the four citizens and emergency personnel.
The ordeal began Feb. 27, 2017, when the Kirschners arrived at the airport ready to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Seattle to visit Steven’s 99-year-old mother.
When he began to feel ill, the couple decided to cancel their flight and left to seek medical attention. When he got outside Terminal 2, Kirschner collapsed on the curb because of a heart attack.
“I didn’t feel that bad until right when we were boarding,” Kirschner said. Although, looking back on it, the pain radiating through his arms was a symptom of the impending attack, he said.
Four men who work as nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Walnut Creek Medical Center happened to be at the airport after traveling to a nursing conference and saw the scene unfold.
“We had crossed the street by accident,” said Naca of the moment the group saw Kirschner collapse. When they checked, they could not feel a pulse or see breathing, so they immediately administered CPR until airport medical personnel could activate a defibrillator and emergency responders could get to the scene.
While the four men help people all the time in their jobs as nurses, it was a different experience jumping in to help Kirschner on the curb of the airport terminal, especially outside the hustle of the hospital, they said.
“It was like a reflex,” said Escanio. “We just started doing CPR. But it was a calm scene. It was sort of surreal.”
Vertudez emphasized the importance of knowing CPR.
“At minimum, people should know basic life support,” he said. “Those extra minutes while waiting for after care (from emergency responders) can save a life.”
Oakland Councilman Abel Guillen honored the men along with several airport staff members and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies with a proclamation from the city. A representative from Southwest Airlines issued free round-trip airfare to the four men.
“This shows what happens when when a community comes together,” Guillen said. “Everyone here took the responsibility on themselves to save a life.”
Susan Kirschner hugged each of them outside the Port of Oakland offices.
Her husband is doing fine now, she said when asked about him, but “if they had not walked by (during his heart attack), the answer would be horrifying.”
