Heart hospital awards group for using CPR to save wrestler's life

By Jeff Raymond
Staff Writer Daily Oklahoman

Oklahoma State University athletic trainers and students' teamwork to save a 15-year-old Ponca City wrestler's life earlier this summer has made them recipients of this year's Oklahoma Heart Hero award.

The designation, which the Oklahoma Heart Hospital awarded last year for the first time, is given to a person or group who use CPR or an automatic external defibrillator to save someone's life.

Wesley Atkins was attending an annual summer wrestling camp July 1 in Stillwater with his teammates when he suddenly collapsed, turning blue and losing his pulse and consciousness. His family is convinced the now-healthy teenager would have died had the OSU trainers not known what to do and when to do it.

CPR may come in handy

"Nobody ever thinks they're ever going to have to do CPR on a 15-year-old kid,” said his mother, Denise Tyson. "CPR takes a tiny fraction of time to learn and nobody ever thinks they're going to need it.”

That's the message the Heart Hero award is trying to send — learning CPR and how to use an automatic external defibrillator may never come in handy, but, if it does, you'll likely be a lifesaver. The OSU crew knows this firsthand.

OSU Certified Athletic Trainer Matt Herrill said he was just doing his job. With the increasing prevalence of "dummy-proof” automatic external defibrillator, people should prepare themselves, he said.

"The hardest part of the whole thing was when I had to turn around and call his mom,” he said, giving credit to his students for performing CPR and using the defibrillator on Atkins.

Athletic training student Blaine Burris said he first thought Atkins was having a seizure but knew a heart problem was to blame when he couldn't detect a pulse and noticed the pallor of the boy's face. Burris, fellow athletic training students Ryota Higuchi and Kevin Ortega, and Herrill worked together like a hospital cardiac arrest team, calling responders and administering CPR and the electric start from the defibrillator that helped restart Atkins' heart.

Burris said his reward was getting to see his training work.

"As I would give a breath, his face would lighten back up,” he said.

Atkins had an abnormal electrical pathway in his heart, which doctors have eliminated. Although not present at the Thursday ceremony at the heart hospital, he said in a News9 video that he hoped to return to the mat as soon as possible and hoped the experience would lead to a wrestling scholarship.