Pope Airmen respond to medical emergency

by Tech. Sgt. Peter R. Miller
440th Airlift Wing

4/17/2014 - Pope Field, N.C. (Apr. 6, 2014) -- "Help! I'm having a heart attack!" she said as she sat down next to her car. From her car window, stopped in the middle of the street, peered her 2-year-old son.

On Mar. 14, 2014, three Air Force Reservists with the 440th Operations Support Squadron happened upon this scene while returning from lunch, said Senior Airman Kristany Lattin, a 440th OSS intelligence analyst. They immediately took action to secure the scene and care for the woman and her son.

"He was standing in the car looking down at his his mom lying in the middle of the street, so I sat with him," said Lattin. "He was laughing and very talkative but I couldn't quite understand him, but I could understand him say, 'mom die?' So I would tell him, 'no, mom's fine' and distract him with something else."

The boy had plenty of toys, said Lattin. Later, she and the child would shoot road signs with his toy guns as Capt. Courtney Merril followed the ambulance to the hospital, she said.

"The Air Force has given me the ability to respond to stressful situations," said Lattin, a Greenville, N.C., native. "It's important to know what to do in a stressful moment and have the ability to apply it."

Tech. Sgt. Mary Smith, NCO-in-charge of the 440th OSS intelligence squadron assessed the scene and took the patient's vital signs, she said.

"I was calm because I knew I had recently taken CPR training and we had (aeromedical evacuation crews) around the corner," said Smith. "The training made me more comfortable because I knew exactly what to do when I saw her. It was actually really easy."

After driving the woman's car out of danger, Merril, a 440th OSS intelligence officer, ran to retrieve a first aid kit, aspirin and an automatic defibrillator from her squadron headquarters, where she happened upon Capt. Jack Solghan, a flight nurse with the 43rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, said Smith.

"They had the situation in hand when I got there" said Solghan. "They showed scene awareness, collected data for the ambulance, and stabilized the patient. They did exactly what they were supposed to do."

Merril called the woman's husband, a Fort Bragg soldier, who was able to meet the four Airmen at the hospital, said Solghan.

"She went one step further by calling him," said Solghan. "It just shows that we're one team in one fight. These are the skills we use in war, but we use them at home too."

Even though the patient was having a panic attack and not a heart attack, this real world example demonstrates the teamwork and responsiveness Air Force Reservists train to use whenever and wherever an emergency occurs, said Lattin.

"They are representative of the very best that we bring into the Air Force today," said Lt. Col. John Kitchell, 440th OSS Chief of Intelligence. "This underscores how our people routinely do extraordinarily great things. I am intensely proud of my division."