School security officer pushes for CPR training after teachers help save his life
SOUTHWEST RANCHES - Three teachers helped save their school security officer's life. He collapsed. Twice his heart stopped. CPR kept the officer alive.
One week later, he hopes his story motivates other schools to train staff in CPR.
Ten days before Greentree Preparatory Charter School opened for classes, administrators hired trainers from Dynamic Integrated Security to train teachers on CPR. The school requires staff to take such training along with first aid instruction every year.
During one training session, a housekeeper painting walls inside the building collapsed. The CPR trainers used the very techniques they taught to save the painter's life that day. Greentree Prep teachers saw it. A week later, they used the lesson to handle a crisis of their own.
Middle School teachers Jeannie Luna-Verda, Pam Farran and Monica Merchan want no "thank you" from the safe school officer they helped save. Just seeing Scott Weissman alive is thanks enough, they said.
"You think the security guards are here to save us, protect us, protect our students and that day everything unraveled," Elizabeth Gonzalez, Founder of Greentree Prep Charter School said.
"(Doctors at the hospital) let me know hey you coded twice," Weissman said. "You were essentially dead twice."
As parents picked up students, Weissman collapsed in the parking lot.
"I decided to go get a drink of water and the next thing I know I'm sitting in the back of a rescue truck," he said.
"Miss Elizabeth, our owner of the school, screamed out," Farran said.
"I called 911 and we started assessing his situation and he was alert," Gonzalez said. "He was breathing. His heart was beating so we thought immediately it was heat exhaustion. We got scissors. We started breaking his clothes trying to take off his gear and then he went into cardiac arrest. When he went into cardiac arrest, (Farran) who was with me immediately started performing CPR."
"You just do it," Farran said. "It's automatic."
"He was fine for, at the at moment you don't know if it's minutes or seconds because your adrenaline is going so fast," Gonzalez explained. "Then he went into cardiac arrest the second time."
"Right after Miss Farran started (giving CPR again), Miss Merchan took over and then we did," Luna-Verdas said. "But we were all in prayer at the same time."
They continued giving CPR until paramedics took over and carried Weissman to a hospital. Surgeons put three stents into an artery and implanted a defibrillator. About 20 minutes later, Weissman learned what happened. When Gonzalez came to visit him, Weissman greeted her with a joke.
"I said who broke my ribs," Weissman said of his two ribs broken during CPR. "That's just me. It's a traumatic event. I'm not going to let it eat me up. I'm here because I was in the right place at the right time."
The trio of teachers who gave CPR said they wondered if it would work or if their technique was correct.
"That (was) the first thing," Merchan, Farran and Luna-Verdas said. "But prayers and faith that we were doing the right thing that we had the proper training and we were there at the right time and at the right moment."
The school has since invited parents to learn CPR. More than a few signed up for classes and one parent donated money to buy an automated external defibrillator (AED), Gonzalez said. She hopes to have a device for every building on campus.
Meanwhile, her team of heroes hopes schools that do not provide CPR training to staff find inspiration to do so.