LAS VEGAS (Jan. 3, 2001)—Geoffrey Beasley was in the right place at the right time, at least for his neighbor, who was saved by the quick reactions and heroism of the Las Vegas-based Silver State Tire Distributor warehouse manager.
It was a Sunday evening and Mr. Beasley, 49, and his family had gone out for dinner. Upon returning, he heard a loud bang on his door and then two frantic women shouting.
The pair had been walking with Mr. Beasley's neighbor, when the neighbor had a heart attack and collapsed on Mr. Beasley's driveway, splitting his head open. With no medical training of any kind, Mr. Beasley simply let instinct take over.
He rushed to his fallen neighbor and pounded him hard on the chest. Meanwhile, he yelled for his wife, a schoolteacher trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). He also shouted for his daughter to call 9-1-1.
“I really didn't know what I was doing,” Mr. Beasley recalled. “My daughter secured his head and stopped the bleeding on his head. He was actually dead, and we brought him back to life.”
Mr. Beasley and his wife administered CPR until paramedics arrived and took over. Mr. Beasley said it took the paramedics nearly 45 minutes to stabilize his neighbor before taking him to the hospital.
The paramedics' actions aside, it may have been Mr. Beasley's efforts that actually saved the neighbor. At the hospital, doctors discovered a valve in the man's heart, which had become jammed during the heart attack, had released, “because I was beating on his chest so hard,” Mr. Beasley said.
The neighbor had surgery to repair the valve and once out of the hospital, tried through a third party to offer Mr. Beasley a token of his appreciation, which Mr. Beasley turned down.
“Another neighbor explained the story with the valve and said, 'You did actually save his life. He wants to do something. He wants to give you his truck,'” Mr. Beasley said. “I said, 'That's bull.' What do you do when a neighbor collapses on the driveway? Sweep him off to the side or try to save him.”
This wasn't the first time Mr. Beasley aided in an emergency. While in his native England, he also came to the aid of a man suffering a heart attack in his car.
To Kevin Chester, western region manager for Mastercraft and Roadmaster Tire, Mr. Beasley's actions came as no surprise. “He is a gentleman, a true tire professional, a great customer, and now he can add hero to his list of accomplishments,” Mr. Kevin Chester said in a letter to Tire Business.