Learning CPR pays off for all

How many of us see stranded motorists along the side of a road during our day-to-day travels? Perhaps we’re commuting between the Valley and Anchorage and see several vehicles pulled over for some reason or another. Maybe we briefly wonder about the sedan halfway in a ditch at the end of a residential street close to home.

Here’s another question — how many of us stopped to help?

Odds are, most of us have to answer no, we didn’t stop. We may have briefly thought about it, but heck, we’re busy, someone probably already called it in, troopers or police are likely already on their way. Powers of persuasion work especially well on ourselves.

That’s why the story of Casey Rusher in today’s edition is a refreshing reminder that not everyone is willing to turn a blind eye to a person in distress.

Returning home from work April 26, he noticed a car stuck in the driveway of a neighbor. He didn’t know the car, but stopped because he wanted to make sure his neighbor was OK.

What he found was an unconscious man slumped over the wheel of his truck. He had apparently become stuck in the driveway.

Rusher kept a cool head, called 911 and followed the professional instruction of Palmer Police Department dispatcher Jared Woody to administer CPR on the man. And for the next 6 minutes, 8 seconds, Rusher gave the man 600 chest compressions while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

Ultimately, the man never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead of an apparent cardiac event, Palmer police report. But because of Rusher, the man was given his best chance at survival.

In hindsight, we can speculate about how many other people passed by that driveway and the man in his car without stopping before Rusher came along. We can play the “what if?” game about what could have happened if the man had received help earlier. In the end, that doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is that one man doesn’t have to wonder “what if” he’d stopped to help. Had he driven by that car and later learned the man inside had died, Rusher said he would have wondered for the rest of his life if his apathy had played a role.

Perhaps it was fated for Rusher to come by that car at that moment. He completed a CPR training class through his company, Prism Designs and Construction, the day before.

We’re also reminded that, although it couldn’t save this particular motorist, CPR does save lives. Knowing how to perform emergency life-saving procedures is something we all should make a priority.

Like young Anthony Keller, a former Wasilla teen who used CPR skills he had recently learned to save a 5-year-old girl who had fallen into a hotel swimming pool in October 2011. We were proud to report on the then-15-year-old whose response saved the life of little Taylia Hardy.

Rusher and Keller likely never met — and Keller doesn’t live in the Valley anymore — but what they do have in common is making the effort to learn CPR and using it when the opportunity presented itself.