A suburban high school football player was out for a training run with teammates this summer when he went into cardiac arrest, but quick action helped save his life.
Nicholas Hunt, a junior at Ridgewood High School in Norridge, was on a training run on the Des Plaines River Trail when he suddenly collapsed.
“My vision started to go blurry, and that’s all I remember,” he said. “I just remember waking up in the ambulance and freaking out.”
Hunt was with two of his teammates and a friend when the emergency unfolded.
“I just saw him collapse,” RJ DeGuzman said. “I was like, in a state of shock.”
Fortunately for Nicholas, his three friends, including DeGuzman, Frank Horak and Jerome Adaya, had all been trained in CPR during health class the previous school year, and they jumped into action.
“The first one to jump into action was RJ, because he said ‘oh yeah guys, we have to do CPR,’” Adaya said. “So he started doing that, and Frank did mouth-to-mouth.”
The students all praised what they had learned in health class as helping to save their friend’s life.
“That’s the only thing that we knew to do,” Adaya said. “We learned it in health class the year before that, so it’s still kind of fresh in our minds.”
An Illinois high school law requires high school students to learn CPR.
“I think a lot of adults in that situation would freeze, and the fact these kids didn’t even hesitate, there wasn’t even a question of what they were going to do,” health teacher Kate Connelly said.
Hunt says he’ll always be grateful for the quick actions of his friends.
“It’s really lucky that they knew how to do that, because if they didn’t, I don’t know what would have happened,” he said.
DeGuzman said he recommends that anybody learn how to do CPR in case a similar event befalls someone they love.
“If you have the capability, and the want to know CPR, you should help someone save a life,” he said.