http://ozarkspub.vo.llnwd.net/o37/KSMU/audio/mp3/springfield-man-uses-cpr-skills-save-life_80224.mp3
It was October 19th, 2013 and the MSU bears had just defeated South Dakota State 35 to 21.
"I just happened to be at the end of the ball game and heard a distress call that kind of came out from some folks, and a student worker that was one of the staff there at the Plaster Sports Complex I guess knew or was aware that I had had some CPR training and said there was a gentleman in distress over by where the team buses were parked, and then she turned around and she ran back towards me and she said, 'he's not breathing,' so I broke into a dead run to get over there," he said.
It turned out the man in distress was an uncle of one of the opposing team’s players who was in Springfield with his wife and daughters to watch his great nephew play.
When Moore arrived on the scene, he found Earl Steiner on the ground and unresponsive—the man had no heartbeat and no pulse.
"The first thing that came to mind was 'he's having a heart attack,' and as it turns out he had had I guess some kind of a viral thing that attacked his system and it put his system into essentially a cardiac arrest situation," he said.
Moore had taken CPR and AED classes when he worked at Missouri State University and had kept up his certification each year. When he retired from MSU and went to work for Ozarks Emergency Management, he received a different level of training through the Springfield Fire Department. But he hadn’t had to use it until that day.
"When I got there, I mean, clearly he was not breathing. I checked his pulse immediately, checked his carotid, and there was no pulse. There a couple of other folks with me, and I said, 'I'm starting CPR. Somone call 911,' which is always--that's the chain, and we opened up his shirt, and I could tell immediately that he had had a previous open heart surgery because I could see the scar there from the previous surgery, and my first reaction, and it was only a second or two, was 'oh my goodness, this is, you know,' then I remember consciously thinking, 'you know what? That doesn't matter. You've got to do this, and so I just started doing CPR immediately," he said.
While an MSU trainer did mouth to mouth resuscitation, Moore performed chest compressions for about six minutes until someone from the police department arrived and took over.
"The one thing that really struck me as I was doing that CPR--because you can't stop. I mean, you've got to keep doing that process until either you run out of steam or somebody relieves you, and I remember when I finally--when somebody tapped me on the back. He said, 'I'll take over,' and I stood up, and I was as exhausted as I've ever been in my entire life from keeping up that steady pressure, that steady pace," he said.
Moore didn’t have time to question whether he should jump in and help. He’s told people since that day that even if you think you’re doing it wrong you’ve got to try because the first two to three minutes make all the difference. He knew if he didn’t do something the man wasn’t going to make it.
Even after being given four or five rounds of AED there still was no active pulse, so Moore kept going with the chest compressions. Looking back, he says it seemed like it took forever but it was only a matter of minutes.
According to Moore, while he was taking the CPR classes he didn’t think he’d really have to use the skills he learned. But he says his outlook has changed.
"Because you never know where you can be and that might make the difference for somebody," he said.
He says CPR is easy to learn and there are plenty of opportunities in the Springfield area to learn it. And not only might you be able to help a stranger, he says, you might save a loved one.
"One of the statistics that I wasn't aware of, you know, a lot of the CPR that gets done is actually done in a home with someone you know. It only takes just a couple of hours to learn how to do that and then get recertified by just kind of a refresher kind of a thing, and, yeah, it's worthwhile," he said.
Steiner still had no pulse when he was loaded into the ambulance, but Moore was relieved to learn a few days later that he was recovering in a local hospital.
And Moore got to meet the man whose life he helped save after the patient had been in the hospital in Springfield for a few weeks. He’s heard from him a couple of times since through e-mail. One message contained an apology for not being more aware of what was going on during Moore’s visit.
"He had been sedated and had been under care for a couple of weeks when I finally got to go see him, and he had no recollection of anything that happened to him. He had no memory of it happening, and so he said, 'I'm a little more coherent now,' and he shared with me that the milestone now is to get out and play some golf and travel with his wife again, so just a delightful man, a really nice man, I mean, it could happen to anybody. I would hope that somebody, if it happened to me, that somebody would be there and be willing to do that because I never thought that I would have to do that practice, you know, and I did," he said.
Moore is now a staunch advocate for learning CPR and how important it can be in an emergency situation. And he still carries memories of that day close to the front of his mind as he lives each day.
"It taught me a lesson, you know, that you can make a difference," he said.
This story and others in the Sense of Community Series can be found on our website, ksmu.org. For KSMU, I’m Michele Skalicky.