with his
Man who suffered heart attack while driving reunited
with his ‘angels’
BY SUE M. MORGAN
Staff Writer
FARRAH MAFFAI staff During the reunion Tuesday at the Bridgeway Diner, Jerry Springard is surrounded by the group that helped save his life. Standing behind him are officers (l-r) Joe Mandola, Addie Spinola and Ed Jarusiewicz; at his sides are waitresses Ashley Towle (left) and Naomi Noto. At right, Jerry Springard talks with Noto and Old Bridge Police Capt. Jeffrey Robbins.
OLD BRIDGE — When a wayward vehicle with an unconscious driver ended up in the parking lot of the Bridgeway Diner, waitresses Naomi Noto and Ashley Towle sprung into action.
Just after a witness of the accident rushed into the main dining room and yelled to employees of the Route 9 south establishment to call 911, both waitresses ran outside to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the motorist.
"I said, ‘We have to give this guy CPR,’ " said Noto, a 21-year-old college student, recalling the events of an afternoon last November. "I grabbed Ashley and said, ‘Let’s go.’ "
"I was waiting on a table when I saw a bunch of people crowded around a car outside," recalled Towle, 20. "The car was parked at an angle."
"I dropped everything, and [Noto] and I ran to the car," she added.
Following the CPR training they had received as members of separate local first aid squads, the waitresses slowed down before reaching the 2002 Kia Rio to make sure no cars were coming toward them. They saw the driver, Gerald E. Springard of Sayreville’s Parlin section, slumped over the steering wheel.
They learned later that Springard, 63, had suffered what his cardiologist would call a sudden-death cardiac arrest. The heart attack caused him to lose control of the vehicle while he had been driving northbound on Route 9 just minutes earlier.
Springard’s vehicle veered left across the other northbound lanes, over the highway’s grass median, and across the three southbound lanes and an access ramp’s curb divider before coming to a stop in the diner parking lot.
With little time to spare, the pair moved to get Springard, who was not breathing, fully horizontal so they could start mouth-to-mouth resuscitations and chest compressions. The pair wanted to remove Springard from his small vehicle, but knew they could not carry him.
"Our first thought was, How do we get him out of the car?" Noto said. "But it was just us two."
She then pulled the front seat forward and next pushed it back to get Springard in a fully reclining position.
Now inside the vehicle’s backseat on the driver’s side, Noto began mouth-to-mouth while Towle, on the passenger side, started chest compressions.
"Five to seven minutes had passed by the time we got to him," Towle said. "CPR has to be done within 10 minutes [of the attack]."
Springard did gasp for air, but was still not breathing and had no pulse, Towle remembered.
"Until you get a pulse back, they’re not real breaths," she explained. "They’re just gasps."
Old Bridge police officers Joseph Mandola and Addie Spinola arrived at the scene at approximately 3:30 p.m. and found Noto and Towle trying to revive Springard. They were joined by Officer Ed Jarusiewicz.
"The young ladies were already in the car performing CPR," Mandola recalled.
Using one of the automated external defibrillators (AED) that all patrol vehicles are equipped with, Mandola and Spinola tried to shock Springard’s heart back into rhythm, according to the police report. After the second shock, Springard’s heart started beating enough to be detected, Mandola and Spinola recalled.
The Rural/Metro First Aid Squad then arrived and continued to shock Springard’s heart. The squad then transported him to Raritan Bay Medical Center’s Old Bridge division.
"He still had [a heartbeat] when he left us," Mandola said.
After the ambulance drove away, Towle went back into the diner and broke into tears. An aspiring nurse, it was the first test of her CPR skills outside of her class training.
"I was hysterically bawling," she said. "All I know is that I just did what I was taught to do."
Noto, who while performing resuscitation recognized Springard as a Bridgeway customer, had more of a sense of satisfaction in contrast with her initial nervousness.
"I felt a calm inside of me knowing that we at least tried to do something," Noto said.
"It was scary. [Springard] reminded me of my grandfather," she added.
Later that evening, Towle called the hospital to check on Springard’s condition and was told he was recovering but remained in critical condition.
Spinola and Mandola stressed that the actions of the two waitresses were crucial and helped Springard to survive.
"Without them starting CPR, we might not have had the results we had," said Mandola, a 13-year member of the force.
"It would have been different," agreed Spinola, a township officer for five years. "The first couple of seconds count."
Police Capt. Jeffrey Robbins, supervisor of the department’s traffic and safety bureau, praised Mandola, Spinola and Jarusiewicz for their own quick responses to the incident.
"Department-wide, we are proud of all of our officers who respond," Robbins said.
Springard spent about a month in recovery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and in April returned to work in advertising sales at Greater Media Newspapers in Freehold. Greater Media publishes the Suburban.
Springard, who has no recollection of the accident or the immediate aftermath, finally met with both waitresses and the three officers during an arranged reunion at the diner on Tuesday.
Seeing Springard alive and well is satisfying enough, Spinola pointed out in response to Robbins’ praise.
"This is our reward, sitting here talking with [Springard]," Spinola said. "This is a better reward than anything."
Until a few years ago, only the supervisors carried the defibrillators in their vehicles, Robbins explained. Cases such as Springard’s show how essential it is to have AEDs in all patrol vehicles, he noted.
"We’ve saved several lives," Robbins said.
"We don’t leave without [AEDs]," Spinola said.
"You can’t go out on the road without it," Mandola added.
The last thing Springard recalls prior to his heart attack is stopping at a Route 9 garden center where he bought an angel tree-top for a Christmas tree.
He now considers Noto, Towle and the police officers involved to be his living angels.
Springard said he was "very happy" to get a chance to thank all of them this week.
"I really have no words to describe how grateful I am," he said.
Meanwhile, the incident has shown Noto that her true calling is to become a physician, as she had been considering.
"Now I know that I am going to become a doctor and this is what I want to do," she said.
Noto’s route to medicine will be through nursing as she begins classes at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft or Middlesex County College in Edison this fall. In 2005, she hopes to enter the Charles E. Gregory School of Nursing at Raritan Bay Medical Center’s Old Bridge campus.
Towle, who shared a psychology class with Noto when they both attended Old Bridge High School, will begin studying nursing at Brookdale this fall as well. Her mother, a nurse at Old Bridge’s Summer Hill Nursing Home, is her inspiration.
"I want to be as strong as she is," Towle said.
Towle previously served on the Old Bridge Green and White First Aid Squad, and Noto, who was certified in CPR last June, served on the Sayreville Volunteer First Aid Squad.