Heartfelt thanks to saviours

Jose ‘Kenny’ Martinez with Glenreagh CFR volunteers and NSW Ambulance executives Terry Watson and Ryan Salter.

Bruce Thomas

JOSE “Kenny” Martinez owes his life to his friends, to Glenreagh's volunteer Community First Responders (CFR) and to a quick-thinking publican.

Yesterday he was back at Glenreagh School of Arts to receive a Cardiac Arrest Survivor Award from the acting deputy director of operations for the Ambulance Service of NSW, Terry Watson.

Looking on from the audience were most of the friends and helpers who ensured he survived.

The Wells Crossing man had a heart attack while he was having lunch at Glenreagh's Golden Dog Hotel on January 16 last year.

Fortunately a team of four CFR volunteers was just five minutes away, having just returned from attending a motorcycle accident.

Publican Warren Dean had already phoned the ambulance to report one of his customers was having chest pains.

CFR volunteers Unice McPherson, retired paramedic Geoff Hicks, Judith Hanson and Steve Green performed cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on Mr Martinez and delivered electric shocks to his heart with a defibrillator until the ambulance arrived, stabilised the patient and rushed him to Coffs Harbour Health Campus.

Mr Martinez has since been fitted with a pacemaker and is now in good health, but he'll never be able to return to his trade or to the punishing work schedule that almost ended his life.

“There's a computer in there (pacemaker) that tells them what I've been doing so I can't lie, he said

The CFR team earned his gratitude, so too his friends Suzanne Young, Rod Forrest and Lee-Anne Johnston.

“My friends got me out of the property and told me I was working too much,” Kenny said. “They took me to the pub for lunch – otherwise I'd have carked it in my shed.”

Up until his heart attack, the tall, fit 47-year-old boilermaker and welder also operated a portable mill business on his own and was so focused on developing his business and his property he never stopped working.

He said yesterday he had “only just come good” after 10 trips to Sydney for a series of operations.

“I've been to hell and back,” he said.

“I keep thinking I'm going to get another shock.”

Mrs McPherson, now retired from Glenreagh CFR, was on hand yesterday to give Mr Martinez a hug.

One of the founding members 19 years ago of what was then Glenreagh Heartstart, she said she had always enjoyed helping other people and this kind of work.

Even before she learned first aid she saved her own husband's life when he had a heart attack at home. Duncan McPherson survived an aortic aneurism.

The MC for the ceremony at Glenreagh was Ryan Salter, the acting Clarence district inspector for the NSW Ambulance Service, who said he had witnessed first hand the passion Community First Responders had for their communities.

And the ceremony was a testament to their success.

Terry Watson said of 49 CFR groups across the state, Nana Glen and Glenreagh were the two busiest, with Glenreagh providing 46 responses so far this year.