Heart attack victims thankful for AEDs in stores

WAUKESHA (WITI) -- It was a Tuesday evening in October 2012, and Blain's Farm and Fleet manager Mark Ellingsberg was getting ready to head home, when he received a distress call.

A customer was having a heart attack.

Ellingsberg immediately grabbed the store's Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and began to help the woman.

"You never think you're ever going to have to use it when you go through the training and then all of a sudden in a split moment you go from just standing there to having to save somebody's life," Ellingsberg said.

In 2007, all Blain's Farm and Fleet stores began carrying AEDs. This effort was launched after an employee died from a heart attack while working in the corporate warehouse.

"For five years, those units sat largely unused until July of last year when we had our first save at our Ottawa, Illinois Farm and Fleet store," Blain's Farm and Fleet Vice President of Loss Prevention and Risk Management Gary Hilt said.

Two more lives were saved at stores just months later.

The AEDs work by providing shocks to the person having a heart attack to help them re-establish a regular heart beat.

"The unit is analyzing the patient. It will tell them if a shock is recommended and when to deliver it, but beyond that we do training with all of our management team in all of our locations," Hilt said.

Ellingsberg is grateful for that training, especially after meeting the woman he saved.

"She thanked me, we had a hug and she's doing very well. She said she actually feels better now than she's felt in a long time," Ellingsberg said.