“For everyday heroes, memories linger”
MSUM student Allison Fuchs helped rescue two drowning 4-year-olds Tuesday.
To read the first story on Fuchs, click here.
By Grace Lyden on Nov 12, 2014 at 8:46 p.m.
WEST FARGO – Allison Fuchs couldn’t sleep.
It was Tuesday night, and she kept reliving the events of that afternoon, when she performed CPR on two 4-year-old boys who nearly drowned in a hotel pool in Casselton.
“I just kept thinking, those could have been my children,” said the mother of three and Sanford Medical Center nurse. “It could have been somebody else having to save their life.”
Fuchs’ quick actions kept the children alive in the critical moments before deputies arrived.
Since then, Fuchs, 40, has heard from more than 100 people through calls, texts, emails and Facebook.
“It’s very, very overwhelming,” she said. “I’m just not used to all this attention.”
Citizen heroes such as Fuchs aren’t all that common, which is why they attract news stories and public commendation.
But most of the life-savers among us, including Fuchs, say they were simply in the right place at the right time. And instead of patting themselves on the back, they spend the weeks after the incident wondering if they did all they could.
That was the case for Deb Olson, also a nurse at Sanford, who performed CPR to save a woman who went into cardiac arrest at a restaurant in Detroit Lakes, Minn., last summer.
“For the six weeks that followed, I just kept thinking about it and thinking about it, did I do the right thing, did I do the right thing,” she said.
Even though the woman lived, “you always second-guess yourself,” said Olson, 57. “But … it turned out for the best.”
Ryan Narlock, another Sanford employee who also works as a manager at the YMCA once a week, had the same experience.
Two years ago, Narlock used a defibrillator to revive a man who had fallen off a treadmill and was having a massive heart attack at the gym.
“Time feels like it takes forever in those situations, and you always sort of wonder if you’re doing the right thing, or the right step,” said Narlock, now 31.
During the week that followed, “I thought about it daily,” he said.
His concerns mostly dissipated when he heard that the man, an acquaintance of his, was making a comeback.
Keeping in touch
Because the man Narlock saved still comes to the YMCA where Narlock works, at 4243 19th Ave. S., they talk about once a month.
Since the incident, they’ve gotten to know each other, and they’re more likely to ask about each other’s families than discuss the day Narlock saved his life.
“It’s become more personal,” Narlock said.
He doesn’t think what he did on Oct. 9, 2012 – sprinting to the fitness center with a defibrillator – has changed their relationship.
“We acted in ways that communities should act,” he said of himself and others performing CPR.
Olson met the woman she saved a couple days after the incident, “and it was very moving for both of us,” she said.
The woman thanked Olson for being her guardian angel, and later sent her a thank-you card.
“She definitely would have died, because she had no pulse” before Olson performed CPR, Olson said.
Although Olson has been a nurse in the Fargo area for 37 years, this was her first time saving someone outside the hospital, and it felt different.
“In the hospital setting where I work, we have all the equipment right at our fingertips; our coworkers are right at our fingertips. When you’re out by yourself, it’s you,” she said. “It’s definitely a lot easier in the hospital setting.”
Fuchs said she would leave it up to the family of the children she saved to contact her.
“I wouldn’t expect it either way,” she said. “My only concern was knowing that they were OK and safe.”
Every act helps
The F-M Ambulance Service sees at least two to three acts of citizen heroism each year, spokesman Don Martin said.
Although that number is small, Martin suspects it’s higher than it would be in some parts of the country.
“Up here, we feel a lot more people are willing to help their neighbor,” he said, noting that medics who’ve worked elsewhere have noticed the difference.
Lt. Joel Vettel, a spokesman for Fargo police, said that on a small scale, “we see people do that all the time.”
Even stopping to help someone who’s been in a car accident and calling law enforcement can make a difference, he said.
Vettel said the police would never ask people to put themselves in harm’s way to help someone, “but we can understand why people would want to do that, because it’s human nature.”
Narlock, who received an F-M Ambulance Lifesaving Award for his efforts, would agree.
“I don’t really consider myself a hero,” he said. “I just consider myself a good community member who was in the right place at the right time.”