How two strangers saved a life in Section 209 of Nationals Park

BBN-NATS-CARDIAC 1104 words

WASHINGTON - A family was enjoying a weekend at Nationals Park on June 11 — a dad, a mom, two adult sons — until John Clements couldn't talk or breathe.

The Milwaukee Brewers, their hometown team, had just given up three straight homers to the Washington Nationals, when

Clements, 58, turned a shade of blue. He had gone into cardiac arrest.

Jamie Jill had just gotten back from his honeymoon in Mexico. He and his wife, Paige, did not have tickets until around noon that Saturday, when one of Jamie's fellow firefighters offered them up. And Lindy Prevatt wasn't supposed to be in Section 211 with her husband, since their friends typically have seats in another part of the stadium.

But when they noticed rustling in Section 209, instinct took over. Jill, 38, told his wife something was wrong and he wanted to check it out. Prevatt, 32 and an emergency room nurse, was nudged by her husband, who is taller and could see a man in distress. In a few minutes, Jill had Clements on the ground in the first row and was performing CPR. Prevatt was right there, too, timing out 2-minute intervals on her watch so she and Jill could switch off.

Jill initially checked for a pulse and didn't feel one. Ushers cleared the two sections as medical staff were alerted around the stadium.

Prevatt estimated it took about 10 minutes before in-stadium responders arrived. Onlookers recalled watching them perform CPR for 20 minutes. Using the ballpark's defibrillator, Jill and Prevatt shocked Clements three times. Firefighters soon arrived and shocked him a fourth time. To avoid touching him after he was shocked, Prevatt held herself up like an acrobat with an armrest and a ballpark rail.

Jill and Prevatt eventually helped carry Clements up the steps and to a stretcher on the concourse. Stadium staff and other emergency responders handled the rest.

"Nobody can choose where they go down," said Prevatt, who is from Alabama and works at Virginia Hospital Center. "But that was very difficult and probably the hardest place you could go down like that, to be able to access. But I'm thankful that I was there, and also that I was the smallest, so I was able to at least get down and fit between the seat and the wall and do good CPR."

Naturally, John Clements doesn't remember much. During the scramble, he can only recall smiling at a bird, then telling his wife and a frowning bird that they should smile with him. He doesn't know how to explain that. He called it "some sort of brain thing." Otherwise, he was looking at his hand during the sixth inning and then woke up in George Washington University Hospital.

And back at Nationals Park, Scott Fear, the team's head of security, delivered the good news to the family: John had come to in the ambulance and was breathing.

After serving as a military pilot for 24 years, Clements retired to fly an emergency medical crew. It was normal, then, for him to witness a lifesaving act, admire it and move on. But now it's different.