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Colo. radio host saves life with defibrillator

By Susan Greene
The Denver Post

DENVER — Say what you may about Dan Caplis.

But the Denver lawyer best known as a conservative talk-show host also should be recognized as a hero. Caplis saved a life on Thanksgiving.

“You may not agree with him politically, but he’s our guardian angel,” says Ellen Thompson, wife of victim Ches Thompson. “Dan’s instantaneous reaction made all the difference.”

The story behind Caplis’ big save begins two years before the gathering Thursday in Cherry Hills Village when Thompson, a 48-year-old ob/gyn, collapsed from cardiac arrest during a touch football game.

The back story starts in August 2007 in Montana when a 17-year-old high school senior was fatally struck by a similar attack during football practice.

Jeff Bowman’s family hired Caplis to handle their lawsuit against the school district. Jeff’s grieving parents wanted to make sure coaches have access to an automated external defibrillator, or AED, which they say would have saved their son.

Bob Bowman convinced Caplis to buy a defibrillator for the Little League team he coaches.

Caplis promptly ordered a $1,700 Powerheart G3, which looks like an oversized lunchbox. He keeps the machine with his athletic equipment in the trunk of his Chevy Tahoe.

“I always pictured it in terms of a child down on a baseball field,” he says.

But the picture looked very different Thursday.

Caplis and Thompson hadn’t actually met while they and about five other dads were playing football with their kids on the sunny holiday afternoon. Thompson suddenly lurched forward and fell on his face.

Dr. Scott Bainbridge, a spine specialist also playing in the game, rolled Thompson onto his back, checked his signs and started CPR in the muddy field. Caplis, meantime, bolted to his SUV. By the time he returned with his defibrillator, Thompson was flatlining.

“Stay calm. Follow these voice instructions. Make sure 911 is called now. Begin by exposing patient’s bare chest and torso,” began the recorded voice in the machine.

Caplis followed the cues, placed the pads on Thompson’s chest and stood back as the AED shocked him with power Caplis describes as “ferocious.”

“Waiting to see if he would react, those were the longest seconds of my life,” he says.

Thompson regained consciousness quickly and strongly. The father of two boys is expected to make a full recovery.

“I was in the right place at the right time with the right people,” he said Monday.

“It would have felt so incredibly helpless to have been there without the machine,” adds Caplis, co-host of KHOW’s Caplis and Craig Silverman show.

I cringe at much of the pro-war, pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-Obama bluster he serves up on the radio each weekday. But Caplis was on his game Thursday - unflinching and in full self-reliant glory.

What’s more, he has the good grace to give credit where credit’s also due - to the memory of Jeff Bowman, who would have been 20 now, and to the work of Bob Bowman, who now spends his days training people to save lives during cardiac arrest.

Only a third of all Americans trained in CPR and AED actually act in a real emergency, Bowman notes. The rest freeze up, wasting time waiting for paramedics.

He trained Caplis well.

“Dan made a textbook save,” says Bowman, who has never had to perform the life-saving skills he teaches. “And out of the tragedy we feel about Jeff every day, an amazing thing has happened - thankfully - for another family.”

Copyright 2009 The Denver Post