TWINSBURG, Ohio – Twinsburg Assistant Track Coach Chuck Glover goes by ‘Coach G’ at the school and to students. He now has a student to thank for saving his life.
Glover was working out at the Twinsburg Fitness center when he had a massive heart attack and collapsed onto the ground in October, according to WJW.
“I put the weights on the floor and was waiting between sets to start my second set and that’s all she wrote,” he says.
Security cameras at the gym recorded the entire incident.
17-year-old junior Nicole Fruscella is a lifeguard at the facility and got an urgent call to come and bring an AED (automated external defibrillator). On the security video, Fruscella is seen running into the room and giving aid.
“We came through these doors right here and then we saw him laying down right over here,” Fruscella told WJW.
Fruscella is trained to use an AED, but has never used one on a patient before.
“We got it ready and we put it on him and we shocked him,” Fruscella said. Paramedics rushed Glover to the hospital where he went into surgery. Glover says he had nearly 100% blockage in a main artery.
“The type of event that I have fewer than 5% of the people that have that survive, and of those 5% only 20% of those come out of it with no brain damage cause you are without oxygen for a while and the response time is so, so critical,” Glover said.
Thankfully it only took Fruscella two minutes to get to Glover and she immediately got the AED ready.
“There was an angel sitting on my shoulder that afternoon and her name is Nicole,” Glover said.
“I definitely look at things differently now. I mean I’m a lot more in tune with what is happening around me,” she said.
“I hope I don’t have to do it. If I do have to do it I’m prepared,” she continued.
Glover has regular cholesterol and says he thought working out at least three times a week was enough to protect him from a family history of heart disease.
Glover and Fruscella have spent countless hours in the same building, although they have never met.
“Everybody throws the word hero around and hero means different things to different people. She’s beyond hero, she’s an angel,” he said.
“Whenever I look back on that day I’m just taken back. I’m like wow, I’m seventeen, I’ve already saved a person’s life. Not everybody gets to say that in their life,” Nicole says.
Glover says if anyone should learn a lesson from his experience, it’s to get checked by a doctor and AEDs should be readily available in schools, workplaces, and public places.
