Off-Duty Mass. Firefighter Helped Save Man's Life at Gym

PEABODY, Mass. -- It wasn't the usual holiday for George Besheres. He celebrated New Year's with a lot of new friends, special people, the kind you never forget.

For that matter, he was grateful to bring in the new year at all, because without the attention of those new friends, 2012 would have started without Besheres.

"It's amazing," he said. "It makes me cry when I think about it. ... It's a miracle I'm alive."

Besheres, 65, had planned to shape up for the season, making regular trips from his home in Lynn to Latitude Sports Club on Route 1 in Peabody. He was there on the morning of Dec. 7, moving to an upper floor and enjoying a bit of solitude as he began stretching and exercising.

"That's the last thing I remember," he said.

Besheres, a retired contractor, went into cardiac arrest. He fell hard on his face, opening a gash. When Latitude employee Judith Bennett exited the elevator, she found him facedown in a large pool of blood.

Bennett began calling for help and, in a world where people too often turn away, avoiding involvement, Besheres' luck changed dramatically.

Beverly physician Carol Warfield, who had been playing tennis, heard the call and responded.

Beverly Hospital ER nurse Cheryl Seaman did, too.

Yoga instructor Alice Odachowski came from her class to join the effort.

Latitude trainer Keith Leblanc arrived to perform CPR.

Beverly firefighter John Salvanelli was coming up the stairs for his workout when "somebody started screaming for a doctor." Reaching the scene, he thought, "Oh, boy, here we go. This is not going to be good."

Salvanelli, an EMT, knew from experience that bringing a person in cardiac arrest back to life is not like in the movies. In 27 years on the job, he'd never seen a person recover after the defibrillator had to be applied.

Nevertheless, while Latitude employee Kristin Hoffman raced for the gym's defibrillator, the group went to work on Besheres.

The stricken man was rolled over.

"His face was all coagulating blood," the firefighter recalls. "His tongue was swollen." Yet both Warfield and Seaman, contrary to guidelines cautioning against mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for bleeding strangers, gave it anyway.

"Talk about unselfish," Salvanelli said.

When the defibrillator arrived, Salvanelli tore it from the package, and he and Warfield attached the pads to Besheres' chest.

"Everybody stand back," Salvanelli said. Then he shocked the unconscious man. "That lifted him off the ground," he recalled, but it did not restore his heartbeat. A second shock did, however.

The Peabody Fire Department and Peabody police arrived, and Besheres was rushed to Union Hospital in Lynn.

Although Salvanelli has responded to plenty of emergencies over the years, this one was different. It was somehow more personal.

"I was shaking afterward," he said. "I mean, you walk into a gym, and five minutes later you're working on a dying guy."

He still had doubts about Besheres' prognosis, though.

Besheres, meanwhile, was moved from the Lynn hospital to Salem Hospital, where he had triple bypass heart surgery.

Later, Leblanc, the trainer, approached Salvanelli at the gym.

"Sal, (George) wants to see you," he said.

"I went up there, and he's sitting up in bed," Salvanelli declares. "He asked me, 'Are you the guy that saved my life?' He was eating a turkey dinner. I said, 'George, I am so happy to see you.'"

"I'm feeling very, very well," Besheres said from his home in Lynn. He knew prior to the attack that he had a heart problem, "but I felt so good I thought I was OK."

Staffers at Latitude are often trained in CPR, general manager Christian Pabilla said, but nothing of this sort had happened at the club before.

"It was unbelievable, the response of both my members and staff," he said. "I'm proud of them."

The incident, meanwhile, has had an extraordinary impact, bonding everyone. Pabilla began to monitor Besheres' recovery, and he has kept the gang at Latitude informed.

"I call George," he said. "I brought him flowers."

"We all see each other all the time," Salvanelli said. "We ask each other, 'How's our patient?'" Across the gym, they smile at one another, like people with a profound secret.

"I want to make a dinner for them all," Besheres said. "I am really in awe of them."

It was an extra-special Christmas, Besheres said. He was comforted by his girlfriend and visited by all his nieces and nephews. "It was heartening. It brought me to tears more than once."

His membership at Latitude remains open, at no charge, and he hopes to return.

"I can't say enough about the club and all the help I got from the members and the staff," he said.

At the gym, they're waiting to see him, too, back among a new group of very special friends.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service