App had local lifesaver's fingers literally on pulse of man needing CPR

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CHAMPAIGN — Six years after the "PulsePoint" app was rolled out in Champaign County, Lester Lindsey has quickly become a living example of why emergency responders wish more people would use it.

Lindsey suffered cardiac arrest on Oct. 6 while riding home from his job at the Original Pancake House in west Champaign, and "PulsePoint" app user Shannon Walter just happened to be across the street. She reached him ahead of the ambulance and started CPR.

In the week that has followed, Lindsey went from being unresponsive and not breathing to being moved out of intensive care and able to speak to his boss, Original Pancake House owner Eric Faulkner.

As of Faulkner's latest visit to Lindsey on Monday, he said, Lindsey was bored in the hospital but doing great.

"It's a miracle," Faulkner said.

The "PulsePoint" app, rolled out in Champaign County in 2017, alerts users who have had CPR training to locations in public places where there's a reported case of cardiac arrest, in the hope that someone nearby can get there and start CPR ahead of an ambulance's arrival.

Faulkner said the 63-year-old Lindsey, a longtime and well-recognized coffee-pourer at the restaurant, has worked for him for 32 years.

Lindsey had just left work around 1 p.m. and was getting a ride home from his cousin when he collapsed in the car.

"They were driving down Springfield" Avenue, Faulkner said. "He (Lindsey's cousin) said Lester was laughing and joking and they were having a good conversation."

But Lindsey's cousin told him that by the time they passed the Country Fair Apartments, Lindsey was leaning against the window and unresponsive. The cousin tried calling 911 but couldn't get a signal, so he drove to the Big Lots store and called for help from there.

Walter, of Champaign, had just finished lunch and was in a parking lot at Round Barn Center when she got a PulsePoint alert on her phone showing a cardiac-arrest victim across the street.

She headed across Springfield and saw someone helping another person out of a car in a parking lot. As she reached Lindsey, he wasn't alert or breathing, she said.

A Champaign Park District program manager and CPR instructor, Walter said she also carries Narcan, which can counter the effects of an opioid drug overdose, in her car, and she asked right away if anyone was a known drug user.

The answer was no, and she immediately started CPR, continuing it for a few minutes until the ambulance arrived and its crew took over.

"I just did what I was trained to do," Walter said. "Obviously, you hope you never have to use those skills."

Walter also trains fellow CPR instructors through an affiliation with OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center, she said.

Also a frequent Original Pancake House customer, she said, she knows who Lindsey is, but she didn't recognize him in the midst of the emergency.

Afterward, Walter said, she left knowing she'd done all she could do.

"I left that situation knowing I was never going to know if he was going to survive, or if he did, what his long-term outcome would look like," she said. "I've been told Lester would like to meet me and I'm open to that. But I'd like him, obviously, to focus on his health."

Since she didn't want any attention from her action, and still doesn't, Walter said she had preferred to remain anonymous.

She decided to put her personal feelings aside, however, to help get the word out about the importance of knowing CPR and using the "PulsePoint" app.

"You could be the difference between somebody living and somebody dying," she said.

The app was launched locally by METCAD, the emergency-dispatch response agency, and the former Presence Regional EMS. OSF HealthCare took over the program after buying the two former Presence hospitals in Urbana and Danville, now OSF Heart of Mary and OSF Sacred Heart medical centers, respectively

Dr. Kurt Bloomstrand, chair of emergency services for OSF Heart of Mary, said PulsePoint currently has 8,000 local users, and he'd like to see a lot more.

Because it's so important to get CPR started as quickly as possible after cardiac arrest, getting it administered by a bystander can be the missing link in the chain of survival, he said.

"Bystander CPR can increase your chance of survival twofold to threefold," Bloomstrand said.

The biggest fear he hears from people about being that critical bystander is they don't know how to do CPR and they don't want to do mouth-to-mouth, he said.

His answer is that mouth-to-mouth isn't necessary because people can learn to do CPR doing hands-only chest compressions.

"We really want to implore the public to do that," he said.

Faulkner launched a GoFundMe campaign to help Lindsey cover medical expenses. To donate, click here.

As of Monday, the campaign was more than halfway to its $25,000 goal.