"To say that it wont happen to me, and you don’t need to know this skill is just false," said Schmitz. "Go out, and learn CPR. It's simple, it's easy, go get it done."
In February Tom Schmitz and Nick Maneely were watching their sons play lacrosse in an indoor box lacrosse league in Rochester when they noticed another father, Dale Lazzaro, fall out of his chair.
"His face went white, and I said he has no pulse," said Schmitz, an army veteran who has years of first-responding training.
Maneely, who rushed over to Lazzaro, also has more than 20 years of first-responding skills. He's currently a volunteer firefighter with Macedon Central.
"When I got him to the ground I evaluated his pulse and realized his heart had stopped," said Maneely.
Another father nearby went to get the AED machine, but Schmitz said the battery was dead. Schmitz, Maneely and another father switched doing CPR for 30 minutes.
"We kept doing hands-only compressions until EMTs arrived," said Schmitz.
Lazzaro regained a pulse and spent eight days in the hospital. It wasn't long before he was back watching his son play lacrosse, thanks to the heroic actions of the men who knew CPR.
"God put the right people, in the right place at the right time," said Maneely.
During the pregame of Sunday's Buffalo Bills home opener Schmitz, Maneely, and the two other fathers who helped Lazzaro will be honored and given the American Heart Association's Heartsaver Heroes Award. Lazzaro will also be there.
"CPR is a life-saving skill," said Kristy Smorol, of the American Heart Association. "We see in this story people knew what to do, people took action and that’s why Dale is still here with us."
According to the American Heart Association, 350,000 people suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital every year in the U.S., and only 10% survive.
Learn how to save a life through CPR.
Smorol said more people need to know CPR so that statistics can improve.
