Tim Bryan showed up to his shuttle-driving job at the Park Regency hotel on Bonanza Drive on March 7 expecting a typical shift during the ski season.
But in the evening, the front desk of the hotel was alerted that a guest had called 911 from a telephone in the room. Park Regency policy requires a staffer to go to the room once a 911 call is made from one of the hotel’s phones.
The front-desk manager on duty at the time sent Bryan to the room. He arrived and found a woman who told him her husband was having some sort of medical problem. The man was 64 years old and visiting Park City from another state.
Bryan recalled on Thursday that he saw the man “grey blue and not breathing.” He was sitting slumped over in a chair, he said. Bryan did not know how to perform CPR, but he remembered Park City Fire District firefighters at a party several years ago chattering about pressing on a person’s chest to resuscitate someone.
Using both hands, Bryan started pressing the man’s chest at two-second intervals. He kept pressing, perhaps 35 times as he awaited the arrival of paramedics. The man’s wife administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as Bryan pressed on the chest.
“I was actually yelling at him to breath, like they do in the movies,” Bryan said in an interview on Thursday, as he was recognized for the action he took. “I was scared.”
Suddenly the man’s eyes opened and he took a breath on his own. The Park City Fire District ambulance crew arrived, asking Bryan to continue pressing the man’s chest as the firefighter-paramedics got their medical equipment — a defibrillator and an intravenous needle — ready.
The Park City Medical Center on Thursday honored Bryan and the Fire District crew that responded to the hotel, giving them the EMS Crew of the Quarter award.
Steve Boyd, a Fire District firefighter and emergency medical technician who responded to the hotel, credited Bryan with helping save the man’s life. He said Bryan took the first step in saving the man.
“He initiated. Time is such a big factor,” Boyd said, adding, “To initiate, to get things rolling, keep circulation. That’s what he’s doing.”
Boyd, who has spent 14 1/2 years with the Fire District, said he is aware of just a few times when a member of the public like Bryan sprung into action as he did.
The Fire District crew used the defibrillator four times in the hotel room and then brought the man in an ambulance to the Park City Medical Center for treatment for heart trouble. The Fire District approximately 40 minutes later took the man to a Salt Lake hospital in an ambulance for further treatment. He spent about a week in the hospital, Boyd said.
“People are not afraid to step up and start performing action,” he said. “Those first initial minutes are a key.”