By Mara H. Gottfried
The St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Ryan and Amy Sportel were in the yard of their St. Paul home, caring for their 10-day-old son, when they saw a car crash. Their instincts as nurses kicked in.
The St. Paul man in the car, Terry Bushard, 60, was having a heart attack — he was turning purple and wasn’t breathing, said Amy Sportel, 31.
Ryan Sportel, 34, and a neighbor pulled Bushard from the car. When police and paramedics arrived, they “found two citizens there saving a life,” said St. Paul police chief John Harrington. The Sportels were giving Bushard CPR.
“Sometimes you get hyperbole, when people are talking about, ‘Well, this was life-saving or this was heroic,’ ” Harrington said Monday. But he said the Sportels’ action “quite truly was life-saving intervention. If it had not happened, another St. Paulite would have perished that day.”
Harrington presented the Sportels with the police department’s Chief’s Award on Monday for their actions Aug. 27.
Bushard, who is doing fine now, was also at the ceremony to give the couple his thanks.
It was about 7:30 p.m. when Bushard had a heart attack and crashed his car in the 1600 block of Hague Avenue, Harrington said.
“While moments, really quite literally seconds, count in that kind of circumstance, the Sportels were taking care of their brand-new — I’m talking (10)-day-old — child, they heard the crash, they saw what was needed to be done and without any hesitation, they rushed to the scene and provided aid,” Harrington said.
The Sportels, who met in nursing school, asked a passer-by to hold their son, Sullivan, so they could do CPR until paramedics arrived.
Sullivan, who turned 13 weeks old Monday, was with his parents as they received their medals. Ryan Sportel works as a certified registered nurse anesthetist at the Fairview Red Wing Medical Center; Amy Sportel is a nurse in the intensive care unit at United Hospital in St. Paul.
On Monday, Harrington also honored people outside the St. Paul Police Department who had helped with the department-led Operation Shamrock, a 2007 sting that focused on drug dealing downtown, especially at bus stops, and involved undercover officers buying drugs from about 100 people.
Harrington gave Chief’s Awards to security staff from the Securian Financial Group and St. Joseph’s Hospital, who helped with surveillance and monitoring; to sworn and non-sworn staff from the Metro Transit and Woodbury police departments along with the Hennepin County sheriff’s office, which assisted with investigations and intelligence gathering; and to Ramsey County attorney’s office prosecutors, who worked on charging more than 100 cases.
Copyright 2009 St. Paul Pioneer Press
All Rights Reserved