A Series of Unusual (and Lifesaving) Events

Skylar Lane, a student worker in HHSA's Aging and Independence Services, was in the right place at the right time to adminster life-saving CPR to County Library employee Paul Klatt.

There has to be something that explains why Skylar Lane was in the right place at the right time to save the life of County Library employee Paul Klatt.

Whatever the reason, a series of unusual circumstances put Lane in position to perform CPR on Klatt when he suffered a cardiac arrest in the lobby of 5560 Overland in the County Operations Center campus.

Lane is a student worker for HHSA’s Aging & Independence Services. The incident happened on a Tuesday, which happens to be the only day of the week the UCSD student is at AIS for a full day.

Her supervisor was out of work with an illness and so another supervisor asked her if she’d like to attend a meeting with her. The regular meeting room on the third floor was in use and so the meeting was moved to one of the first floor lobby training rooms.

They decided to head down to the meeting 20 minutes before it was scheduled to start to see if they needed to rearrange the room.

And that’s when a co-worker looked out the windows on the room and said, “Someone must have fallen.”

It was Klatt, a senior office assistant for the library. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. According to the American Heart Association, the survival rate for an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in 2015 was 10.6 percent. Nearly one in three victims, however, survives if the arrest is witnessed by a bystander.

Klatt doesn’t remember what happened.

“From what I was told, I was in the lobby of our building,” he said. “Apparently I passed out, went down on one knee and had a cardiac arrest.

“I honestly don’t remember. I don’t know if I was going in or coming out of the building or what office I was in front of.”

Lane said there was only one other person in the lobby when she and her co-workers came out of their meeting room to check on Klatt.

“I saw that he was blue from the neck up,” she said.

People were yelling for someone to grab the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and call 9-1-1 and were starting to provide first aid.

Lane knew what to do and began administering CPR until the paramedics arrived. Lane had spent six months on a first responder internship with an Israeli medical emergency service. She had performed CPR three times before but unfortunately none of those people survived.

What she had done didn’t hit her right away.

“I had so much adrenaline from doing the chest compressions,” she said. “I didn’t really take in what happened.”

She eventually returned to the meeting where she was greeted by a standing ovation.

It finally sank in when someone told her they had received word from the hospital that Klatt was in stable condition.

“I just lost it when they told me that,” she said. “When I got home, I just curled up with my dog and bawled.”

Klatt suffered two more cardiac arrests in the hospital within 24 hours of the first one.

“It’s rare to survive a cardiac arrest, and they say I’m lucky because there were people around,” he said. “They were really amazed I survived after having three of them.

“What was discovered is that I had pretty bad diabetes. That’s what caused the heart to have the arrhythmia. Based on speaking to physicians since then, I now recognize the symptoms I was having that lead up to that day.”

In one more coincidence, Lane’s senior thesis happens to be on diabetes.

Klatt hasn’t returned to work yet, but when he does he’s hoping to meet Lane.

“The first thing I’m going to say is, ‘thank you,’ and go from there,” he said. “All I can say is how grateful I am.”

Klatt said he’s also thankful for all the well wishes and prayers from co-workers. “Sometimes it takes an incident like this to tell you how important you are to people.”

“My recovery has been well and I’m doing great,” he said. “I just can’t over-exert myself.

“I can do laundry though. As long as it’s not too heavy.”

If you’re interested in becoming certified, or need to be recertified, in CPR/AED/First Aid, you can register through the County’s Learning Management System.