Orange County Emergency Services recently celebrated National EMS Week to honor the work of local responders.
The county kicked off the occasion with the third Cardiac Arrest Survivors Reunion. The bi-annual event celebrated those in Orange County who survived cardiac arrests in the last two years and the local law enforcement, firefighters, and EMS workers who resuscitated them.
Located in downtown Hillsborough, last week’s reunion invited survivors to share their stories and also featured speeches honoring the responders. And a key theme from the event centered on how in most instances, a bystander was integral to the positive outcome.
The youngest survivor in the room was Lincoln Tyler, who had his cardiac arrest at seven months old. At the event, his mother Johanna Tyler recalled how her three-year-old daughter Nora immediately noticed something was wrong while sitting next to Lincoln in the backseat.
“She said he’s acting weird, I don’t know what’s going on,” Tyler said. “And all the sudden, I said ‘tell me what he’s doing,’ and she’s making a choking sound.”
As the first bystander responder, Nora was honored with a pin, alongside the local emergency professionals who helped save her brother. Tyler expressed her gratitude for Nora, the responders, and for the memories her family now has with Lincoln.
The Tyler family with the honored first responders at the third bi-annual Cardiac Arrest Survivors Reunion.
“When we called 911, the kindness, firmness, gentleness that we had was amazing because I started to panic. I was scared I was going to lose my baby,” Tyler said. “And [the telecommunicator] had to really pull me back in so I wouldn’t spiral to give him chest compressions until help arrived.”
“The two firemen rescue people who showed up and were amazing,” she continued. “[They] literally jumped out of the car. I don’t even know if they put the car in park for how quickly they reacted, and I never have been so happy to see EMS. I heard them, I could see them coming. I was so thankful. They started working on Lincoln right away.”
Eight of the 31 survivors attended the ceremony, which recognized hundreds of first responders across Orange County’s police, fire and EMS departments. EMS Bureau Chief of Clinical Quality and Compliance Kyle Ronn described the event as a way to not only celebrate them, but also to highlight the importance of community members identifying a problem, intervening immediately, and alerting EMS services.
Orange County EMS first responders honored at the ceremony.
Ronn told 97.9 The Hill how the local tradition to celebrate survivors started in 2016 before returning after the pandemic in 2023. This year, he said the event put an even stronger focus on sharing the survivals with the community, inviting county commissioners and the American Heart Association to attend.
“One of the driving forces that came out of two years ago in [20]23 was how much the providers — whether that was communication, fire, or EMS — after the event took to social media to post about celebrating their survivor and how meaningful it was for them and rejuvenating in an era of burnout for medical providers,” Ronn said. “Being able to have that touchstone celebration was key for them — ‘Oh right, this is why I do this.’”
But the audience especially felt the absence of one person during the celebration. Before passing away earlier this month, Public Safety Telecommunicator Rob Tuck served the county for nearly two decades. Tuck’s family accepted his several awards on what would have been his 59th birthday.
Public Safety Telecommunicator Rob Tuck was honored at the May 18 ceremony.
Chief Medical Officer for Orange County Emergency Services Joe Grover spoke to Tuck’s impact on the local community.
“Since 2013, he participated in a total of 113 cardiac arrest calls, with 13 neurologically intact survivors since 2017,” Grover said. “In fact, I’m happy to report that [Rob] participated in the care of one of the survivors who is present here today. It is with full hearts that we honor the dedication of this first responder, his family, and the lives he helped to save.”
At 12 percent, Orange County’s cardiac arrest survival rate is currently higher than both the state and national averages of 8 percent. While Ronn described positive resuscitations as a team effort, he said it is integral that community members understand how they are the first step in that chain of survival.
“One of our survivors was at the Sportsplex, and it was a bystander that got the AED and started CPR,” Ronn said. “Those fast, initial actions to start saving a life, to start reaching out, to get additional help are what saves lives.”
The county’s current bystander rate — when a bystander performs CPR before professional help arrives — is 44 percent, and Ronn said his team is working to improve that number through expanding both CPR education and AED access. And sharing success stories highlights the importance of knowing when and how to intervene, he said.
“EMS, we have a lot of different tricks and tools that we can use, but we’re at minimum five minutes away, usually. And that drops the survival rate down to 50 percent,” Ronn continued. “And if somebody can start CPR before we get there, and then we do the more advanced things once we get there, those are the things that save lives.”
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