At 8:15 a.m. today, two Foothill staff members saved a man’s life after he suffered what is thought to have been heart attack.

ASB advisor and English teacher Melanie “Captain” Lindsey was teaching a “Body Pump” class at Mavericks Gym in Ventura, when she and Foothill athletics director Emily Stevens, who was taking the class, were called out of the room. A man upstairs had suddenly fallen off his spin bike and was unresponsive.

“I was about to start class [when] someone came to the door and yelled ‘Does anyone know CPR?’” Lindsey wrote in an email to the Dragon Press.

She and Stevens ran to where the man lay bleeding on the floor.

“I don’t know that we even knew where or why, we just went,” Lindsey said.  

They couldn’t find a pulse, so they used an automated external defibrillator, or AED, to shock him and jumpstart his heart.  

Foothill parent Lysa Urban was taking Lindsey’s class when the incident happened.  She described Lindsey and Stevens as “amazing” in their response to the situation.

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Shortly after the incident began, fire fighters arrived and took over. The victim is currently at the hospital and being cared for.

A nurse at the hospital said “he was talking and ok,” but there were still concerns about his heart condition, Lindsey reported.

According to Urban, Lindsey and Stevens went back to their Body Pump class as scheduled.

“My brain is kinda mush right now.  I’m not sure it’s even registered.  I just hope that he is ok and that we did the right thing,” Lindsey said. “I seriously just think we were in the right place at the right time with the right training.”

Background Image Credit: Aysen Tan/The Foothill Dragon Press