Dallas SWAT Officer Works With Nurse to Save a Life During Church Awards Ceremony

A Dallas SWAT officer and a local nurse were credited with saving a man’s life after a parishioner went into cardiac arrest during an awards Mass on Saturday.Senior Cpl. Darian Loera and registered nurse Magali Reynoso were at the Cathedral Guadalupe in Dallas for an awards ceremony when they suddenly had to use their emergency training.Loera, who was there because his parents were being honored, left the church to add money to a parking meter. When he returned, a man was on the ground in cardiac arrest, Loera said.People gathered around the man called for a doctor or nurse, so Loera identified himself as a police officer and began giving the man chest compressions, relying on his CPR training.“I was really out of my element — that was the nerve-wracking part,” Loera said. “It's not something that I do everyday, as opposed to the SWAT police work.”After the second set of chest compressions, the off-duty officer silently wished for a defibrillator. “Whether it was divine intervention or miracle, Magali is holding a defibrillator as soon as I look to her,” he said.With the help of the defibrillator, Reynoso and Loera were able to make sure the man was breathing again. Paramedics took over from there, and the man was driven away in an ambulance.Ron Heflin, the man who had gone into cardiac arrest, recovered well — by Sunday morning, he was walking and joking again, the Texas Catholic reported. Heflin is a frequent freelance photographer for the diocesan newspaper after a long career at the Associated Press.Bishop Edward Burns celebrated Reynoso and Loera’s life-saving work in a tweet.  Continue reading...