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    Colleagues, Campus Paramedics Save Chemsitry Professor's Life

    By VIC COX

    Chemist Curt Anderson has resumed preparations for retirement.
    After 40 years of teaching for the Chemistry Department, Curt Anderson was planning to retire from UCSB. He had a departure date in December and was looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Hanna, and their daughter. But a heart attack last month almost ended those plans before they could unfold.
    Thanks to quick-thinking colleagues, campus paramedics, and what Anderson, 70, has called a "fantastic set of circumstances," he is back teaching organic chemistry and on schedule for retirement. "I had a close call," he agreed. "It couldn't get much closer."
    On Friday morning, Oct. 11, Anderson, an associate professor in chemistry, walked from an Academic Senate committee meeting to his department's office on the first floor of Physical Sciences North. He turned in an exam he wanted duplicated, and climbed the nearby exterior stairwell on his way to his office in the adjacent Chemistry Building.
    Details on what happened next are foggy, but from interviewing most of the participants the following picture emerged.
    Anderson recalls not feeling well, a feeling that deepened as he climbed the stairs and rounded the corner onto the second-floor balcony connecting the two buildings. He attributed his feelings to the plethora of medications he was on for a cardiac irregularity known as atrial fibrillation.
    Standing on the balcony was bioinorganic chemist Alison Butler, who had come from her third-floor office in search of a computer part. She was talking to the department's computer manager, Paul Weakliem, whose office opens onto the balcony. Butler spotted Anderson and immediately noted that his walk was abnormal.
    "Are you all right," she called to Anderson, who responded, "No, I'm not. I need to sit down."
    A petite woman, Butler grabbed a chair from Weakliem's office and placed it in the corridor as Anderson stood next to the balustrade. Suddenly, he collapsed, bumping his head on a pillar. Butler shouted to Weakliem, "We need to start CPR now!" and told him to call 9-9-1-1 for the campus paramedics unit, known as Rescue 7.
    "At first, I thought I had over-reacted," recalled Butler. She straightened out the older man's legs and asked his name, which he correctly answered. Then, "his eyes rolled back and he started turning blue," she said. She and a technician, Stephanie Haetty-Baudrey, searched for a pulse and could not find one. Butler yelled, "Does anyone know CPR?"
    Just then, chemist Gui Bazan, whose office is near Anderson's, entered the balcony. He had gotten water from the department office, heard Butler's cry, and saw her talking to Anderson on the floor.
    Focused intently on Anderson, Bazan was unaware of the small crowd collecting around them. "I couldn't think of anything but him," he said later.
    While Bazan and Butler labored to save their colleague, her desperate calls had reached the ears of Nathan Franklin, a materials chemistry post-doc with an office above Weakliem's. Through an open window, Franklin heard the initials "CPR," and "that got my attention," he said.
    While working for chemical engineer Eric McFarland, Franklin had learned that McFarland was also a physician--and he had been seen on the floor that morning. Franklin started yelling for McFarland and pounding on doors until fellow post-doc Henrik Berkedal suggested the right one. "Eric didn't waste a second; he pushed right past me," said Franklin.
    "I have never been so happy to see Eric in my life," said Butler of the moment McFarland arrived on the balcony. Approximately two minutes had passed since Anderson collapsed; McFarland, who has had emergency medicine training, took over the chest compressions.
    Carol Baccash, chemistry's management services officer, was alerted by students to the drama on the second floor. She had the presence of mind to recruit people to hold the elevator and direct the campus Rescue 7 team when they arrived, four minutes after receiving the 9-9-1-1 call.
    When paramedic Ryan Quigley and emergency medical technician Neil Weitzel examined Anderson, they found his heart in ventricular fibrillation, a life-threatening condition. Twice his heart stopped beating, and twice they used the defibrillation paddles to re-establish a regular heartbeat, said Joe Bloom, rescue operations supervisor.
    The rescue team worked to stabilize Anderson's vital signs, then transferred him to the waiting ambulance. By 11:22 a.m., 31 minutes after the call came in, he was in the Cottage Hospital Emergency Room, according to the official reports.
    Anderson returned to work on Nov. 4, still a bit weak on his left side, but able to erase his classroom's blackboards, he noted. He now sports an implanted pacemaker/defibrillator device, but is glad to be teaching again. He shakes his head at the "unbelievable coincidences" of the right people being in the right places at the right times, and speaks softly of how his colleagues saved his life.