A Clark County sheriff’s deputy and a security guard are being commended for their quick response after a teenager collapsed at Columbia River High School on Wednesday afternoon.
School Resource Deputy Albin Boyse and security officer Joe Reed were outside the school Wednesday afternoon monitoring traffic when they heard a call over their radio — a student was down in the gym. They both ran to help.
They arrived to find a 16-year-old boy unconscious and unresponsive. He had been doing some conditioning for football when he collapsed after an exercise, according to Sgt. Alex Schoening.
Boyse and Reed sprang into action. Boyse checked the boy’s pulse and learned he didn’t have one. He said he needed CPR and called for an AED (automated external defibrillator).
“I just knew this kid needs help. … I needed to act now,” Boyse said.
When the AED arrived, Reed took over the chest compressions.
“I’ve taken 30 years of class on it, but I’ve never performed CPR,” Reed said. “It was just surreal in a way. It just becomes tunnel vision. … I kept going and there’s sweat rolling off me.”
All of the hard work paid off when they started to see signs of recovery.
“All of the sudden, I felt this powerful energy underneath my hand,” he said. “His heart just started going 150 beats a minute.”
The boy had a pulse by the time paramedics arrived and transported him to an area hospital. Boyse said the boy was talking and appeared to be OK.
“Medical staff at the hospital confirmed that Deputy Boyse and DRO Reed’s quick response and CPR was instrumental in this student’s recovery,” said Schoening, who oversees Boyse and other school resource deputies.
Schoening said that though all deputies are trained in the basics of medical response, Boyse is specially trained and holds an EMT-IV Tech certificate. He added that situations like this are why the sheriff’s office has school resource deputies based at each high school.
“Albin was seconds away when seconds counted,” he said.
