New Jersey Beach Manager Hailed As A Hero After Saving Man Who Stopped Breathing

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MONMOUTH BEACH, N.J. — The manager at a beach in New Jersey recently saved a man who stopped breathing.

That manager — who had also spent years as a lifeguard — is now being hailed as a hero.

As CBS2’s Reena Roy reports, it was a normal summer Sunday at Monmouth Beach when things went awry.

“The lifeguards came in and we started cleaning the deck,” Assistant Beach Manager Jeremy Julio recalls. “All of a sudden a woman came up in a panic saying that there’s a man down.”

That man was her husband, who was lying on the sand near the bather’s pavilion — not moving or breathing.

“A man crawled up to the shore and fainted,” Kyle Mascia, who helped with the rescue, said. “They were calling for a doctor, they needed some help.”

Luckily for the man in need, Julio came running to the rescue.

“I wasn’t even thinking, it just came natural,” he said. “I started giving him 30 compressions, head tilt, chin lift.”

Crouching down by the man’s side, doing whatever he could to bring him back.

Julio says thinking fast and grabbing a defibrillator was key in saving the man’s life. He didn’t have a pulse, so the device shocked his heart and brought him back to consciousness.

“He started moving around a little bit,” Julio said. “His eyes started opening, he started breathing again.”

The assistant beach manager says the man appeared to be having a heart attack. In more than two decades on the beach, he’s never seen anything like it.

But those 21-years of experience came in handy Sunday.

“You never know when you’re gonna have to do it,” Julio said. “It’s not gonna be every day, but when that situation does arrive you have to be ready.”

Saying luck and and teamwork also played a part, by chance a few nurses were at the beach helping Julio and the other lifeguards.

“Heart was racing and we had to react like that,” Mascia said. “Luckily everything worked out just as we would hope.”

“It was definitely an uplifting experience,” Julio said. “It could’ve went either way and I’m just very happy it turned out the way it turned out.”

The assistant manager is now a hero to many, but in his eyes it was just another day on the job.

Julio says the victim may need heart procedures, but he is expected to be okay.

 

By CBS New York