Eugene members look after their own
A quick response from caring coworkers saved the life of an OSEA member when he had a heart attack on the job recently.
Terry McDonald, a carpenter for Eugene School District, was working on a window at Monroe Middle School when he suddenly collapsed and fell to the ground. His coworker, Martin Thiele, found him almost immediately and ran inside to alert office staff to dial 911.
He encountered Jason Moch, head custodian at Monroe, and went to perform chest compressions on McDonald. Moch grabbed an automated external defibrillator (AED) and went to McDonald’s side, shocking him once. McDonald, who hadn’t been breathing, started to regain consciousness as the ambulance arrived.
“Under the circumstances and the stress of the situation it felt like forever,” Thiele said.
Quick thinking saved the life of OSEA member Terry McDonald, center, a carpenter for Eugene School District. OSEA Field Representative Tyler Whitmire is pictured with Chantelle Green, Jason Moch, McDonald, Monroe Middle School Principal Mike Johnson, Linda Davo, Martin Thiele and Nancy Ehlers.
Moch had been trained in CPR, but he hasn’t had a refresher course in a long time. But he said that past training allowed he, Thiele and other coworkers to act quickly. And that’s precisely the advice he’d share for anyone found in a similar situation.
“Don’t hesitate to do something about it,” Moch said. “Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, do something.”
McDonald said he has had heart health issues for most of his life, but never an incident as serious as this. But remarkably, McDonald isn’t just alive, but relatively unharmed.
“My heart stopped, but they were able to restart it quickly enough that no harm was done to my brain or anything else,” McDonald said. “Consequently, by the next day I was more or less in my normal mode.
Thiele and others even finished up his job for him. But Thele is just happy he and his coworkers were there to help when it mattered most.
“All I had was faith and fortunate coincidence of having good, supportive people, and the district had the AED device purchased so we could do something for Terry,” Thiele said. “Take one piece out of the equation, and he wouldn’t have come back. And that’s pretty sobering. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s a lot of possibility too.”
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