DEERFIELD — Kate Parker of Deerfield decided to become an athletic trainer after spending a lot of time in her high school athletic trainer’s office as a three-season athlete in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
After stints at Tulane University and Middle Tennessee State University, she started helping students recover from torn ACLs, sprained ankles and other injuries at Deerfield Academy about nine years ago. Although the trainers must prioritize covering the “most contact collision” games, she makes time to watch students’ first games back on the field after helping them recover.
“I’ve always been a nurturing person,” Parker said inside the school’s gym building. “I enjoy helping people. I think it’s just in my genes.”
Dr. Leora Cohen-McKeon, another Deerfield resident, works as a primary care provider at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, treating an age group that she enjoys helping.
“It’s a time when people are just learning about how to take care of themselves, and I get to help them learn how to do that,” Cohen-McKeon said. “I often am privileged to get to hear stories and be a part of people’s lives at a time when they might not have anyone, or they’re telling [me] something they have never told anyone or had a life-changing experience — I get to be a part of that, and it’s a real privilege.”
Parker and Cohen-McKeon expect to handle medical emergencies on the job. While off the clock at Tree House Brewing Co.’s Half Marathon on Sept. 13, however, the strangers did not expect their CPR training to soon kick in.
“It’s all a little fuzzy,” Cohen-McKeon said over the phone on Friday.
While watching for her husband on River Road with her 9-year-old daughter, Parker noticed a cyclist standing near the course beside his bicycle. The man was a course official who had been cycling with the lead runners.
“I checked my phone to see where my husband was, and when I looked up, I didn’t see [the cyclist],” Parker said. “I told my daughter to stay put, and I went over.”
When Parker reached the man, “it was clear he was having a cardiac event,” she said. She started chest compressions.
“It was just second nature. When a kid goes down here (Deerfield Academy), you just run out on the field,” she said. “Once you get there, it just comes to you.”
Nearby, Cohen-McKeon heard a runner who was leading the pack holler that someone was on the ground. Like Parker, she ran. Expecting to see a leg injury, she instead found Parker helping a man experiencing cardiac arrest.
According to Deerfield Police Sgt. Adam Sokoloski, Deerfield Police Sgt. Brian Ravish assisted the Deerfield residents with caring for the man before South County EMS Chief Tim Drumgool, Baystate Medical Center physician Lynn LeBlanc, and South County EMS providers Gary Ponce, Matt Hall and Alia Kusmaul responded.
Parker, Cohen-McKeon and the first responders took turns giving chest compressions and the South County EMS providers used the automated external defibrillator (AED) before Parker noticed the man’s neck moving.
“I think he as a pulse,” Parker remembered saying.
The crew confirmed the pulse and LeBlanc transported him to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. According to Sokoloski, the cyclist “is hopeful to come back and thank the people that helped save his life in person.”
“I was so relieved,” Parker said. “Then the adrenaline that’s going through … I was like, ‘I could go run this marathon.'”
Parker, Cohen-McKeon and Ravish, strangers before Sept. 13, hugged after the man left in the ambulance, “an emotional moment” for Cohen-McKeon.
“That is not always the outcome for CPR, so it was really amazing that we were able to get a pulse and that, when he got into the ambulance, he had a pulse,” she said.
Sokoloski, Cohen-McKeon and Parker encourage people to learn CPR, stressing that the skill can come in handy when someone needs it most. CPR “[gives] them the best possible chance” at survival before an AED arrives, according to Parker.
“It was a great illustration of the benefits of people knowing CPR, because without bystander CPR, he probably would not have survived,” Cohen-McKeon said. “We were all following the same guidelines even though none of us had ever met before, which is exactly how CPR is supposed to work.”
“You never know when you can make a difference,” Sokoloski stressed.
After the exhales and group hug, Parker walked back over to her daughter, who asked whether her mother left to perform CPR.
“She goes, “Are you proud of yourself?’” Parker remembered. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, I was in the right place at the right time.'”
To that, her daughter responded, “I’m proud of you.”
“It was the sweetest thing,” she said.
