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Milford High staff praised for saving student’s life

MILFORD – They’re just three big words – Automated Electronic Defibrillator – but for 16-year-old Zachary Harper and his family, they’re words to live by.

For without one particular AED, coupled with a remarkably fast – and flawless – response by staff and teachers at Milford High School, the Harper family of Purgatory Road would have one member fewer today.

On an otherwise routine school day last month, Harper, a junior, was minding the school store with a couple of friends when he suddenly grew light-headed. Seconds after he staggered to teacher Dana Bourassa’s classroom to get a pass for the nurse, it was lights out.

“That’s the last thing I remember,” the slim, black-haired teen said this week at home, where he and his family gathered to piece together the seconds and minutes that, had it not been for nurse Mary Arrowsmith, assistant principal Diane Doran, and teachers Bourassa and Jim St. Onge, would almost certainly have been his last.

On Monday, the first part of the Milford School Board meeting was set aside to honor the quick-thinking responders. Principal Brad Craven recounted the incident, crediting Harper’s rescuers, extolling the importance of AED’s and medical training in schools and other large gathering places, and expressing gratitude for town paramedics’ rapid response and professional know-how.

“This was going to be a fatality,” Craven said at the meeting. “But it’s akin to the ‘Miracle on the Hudson,’ where people knew how to do their jobs and prepare for the worst,” he said, referring to the flight crew that likely saved many lives by safely landing a plane on the Hudson River in New York.

Craven said that although Arrowsmith restored Harper’s heartbeat with the AED “in about a minute,” the teen wasn’t yet out of the woods. “He was lost again in the hallway, and there were about four more life-saving maneuvers that were performed on the way to the hospital,” Craven said.

Superintendent of Schools Bob Suprenant praised the staff’s “good judgment and quick thinking.” State representatives Bob Willette, Steve Palmer and Gary Daniels presented the rescuers and Harper family members with commendations from the State House, and state Sen. Peter Bragdon added a proclamation from Gov. John Lynch. Willette and Bragdon are also both on the School Board.

Harper was first rushed to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, then flown – in 16 minutes, according to mom Deb Harper, who accompanied him – to Children’s Hospital Boston.

There, tests upon tests led to the conclusion that Harper had an acute cardiomyopathy, which, doctors told his family and school staff, “is rare in a (patient) like him and would have been fatal without DC fibrilation (use of the AED), even with good CPR.”

In layman’s terms, Harper said, the cause is best described as some type of virus, or infection, in or around his heart.

A lot of things went through his head as he lay at Children’s Hospital Boston recovering, Harper said. One vow he made, for instance, was to swear off of junk food forever.

“Well, I guess that’s been broken a little bit since I got home,” he said Monday with a sheepish grin.

But one idea that he will follow through on is starting an AED awareness campaign through which he plans to raise funds to purchase and distribute the devices where they’re needed.

Called “Save A Heart,” Harper is working on a catchy logo and collecting ideas for fundraisers. His first AED will likely go to the Souhegan Valley Boys and Girls Club, he said. Future targets include scouting organizations, where the small, portable devices could prove invaluable as part of hikers’ backpacks.

In yet another bit of ideal timing, Milford Ambulance Service director Eric Schelberg said he’d been notified just one day before Harper’s incident that his department had been designated a Heart Safe Community by the State Division of Fire and Safety Standards and Emergency Medical Services.

Schelberg, who responded to the school with his crew that day, said the designation never entered his mind until hours after Harper’s incident.

“All we were thinking about is getting the good outcome that, fortunately, we got,” Schelberg said. “This is a perfect example of how the right equipment and training can save lives. In this case, it all started with a nurse who knew what to do and how to do it.”

The Heart Safe designation recognizes communities that have made significant progress in implementing training programs and purchasing equipment like AED’s, Schelberg said.

“It’s based on a community’s level of preparedness and (emergency medical) education,” he said. “Here in Milford, a lot of businesses have stepped up to the plate, training their employees and buying AEDs.

“The more prepared we are, the more lives we can save.”

Milford was the only area community recognized with the designation this year.