TORONTO – Sometimes, journalists have to look high and low to get the story.
But sometimes, the story finds them – and concerns about the story take a backseat to simple human considerations such as saving someone’s life.
That’s what happened on Wednesday in Washington, Pennsylvania, when a reporter and cameraman suddenly found themselves in the middle of a life or death situation.
Channel 11 News cameraman Dave Clark and reporter Cara Sapida were setting up a live shot for the 6 o’clock news when a man in a nearby car asked them what they were there to film.
Moments later, Clark looked back to see the man slumped over his steering wheel, his face and lips purple.
“I look back, his head’s back. He’s purple,” Clark told Channel 11 News later that day. “I tried shaking him, yelling, ‘Hey, dude.’”
Clark’s camera captured the terrifying scene: from the moment the cameraman approaches the car, to realizing he’s in medical distress, to pulling him out of his vehicle to administer CPR.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we can just keep a pulse going till the paramedics get here, we’ll be cool.’ But his pulse got weaker and weaker,” Clark said.
Meanwhile, Sapida dialed 911, and Clark continued his chest compressions until paramedics arrived.
“’[I was thinking] you better live,” Clark said. “I’m not going home tonight thinking, you know, this guy died on me.”
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Eventually, the paramedics arrived and took over the CPR before administering a shot of Narcan to bring him out of his heroin high.
As Channel 11 reports, heroin and opioid overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in the state of Pennsylvania, even more so then car accidents, with more than 800 deaths reported statewide.
Overdosing on opioids such as heroin, or prescription pills such as Oxycontin, can cause trouble breathing, slowed heart rate, loss of consciousness, and death.
As far as Clark is concerned, the true miracle of this story wasn’t that he happened to be there. It’s that the man happened to be stationary at the time instead of driving.
“If he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t curious why we were there, he would have been on the road,” Clark said. “And it could have been him and who knows who else?”
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