Man in Cardiac Arrest Saved at Trinity Regional School

Peter Clark, 61, had just dropped his granddaughter off at and was chatting with the secretary in the front hall when he begin to feel funny.

"He just blacked out," said his daughter, Erin Cancro.

Clark collapsed around 8:38 a.m. Wednesday, hitting his face on the linoleum floor. In a stroke of good fortune, Officer Pete Howard, MTA Police Lieutenant Alex Lindsay, and Greenlawn Fire Department ALS Provider Mario Geddes were there dropping off their own children.

Howard immediately turned Clark over and began administering CPR, Lindsay reached for the AED. Someone yelled "Nurse!" and School Nurse Kathy Schildhorn rushed out from her office down the hall to see Howard on the floor next to Clark. She immediately began applying the AED, which was on the wall only a few feet away.

"We opened the defibrillator, put the pads on, and saw he was in an arrhythmia that needed to be shocked," she said.

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Clark came to on the third shock and said a few words to Officer Howard, whom he recognized.

"He had that thick Irish brogue," Howard recalled of Clark, who emigrated here when he was 19. Clark tried to stand up but Howard told him to lie still until an ambulance arrived.

An ambulance transported Clark to Huntington Hospital, where he is now reportedly in good condition and under observation.

"He's sitting up, eating, and doing well," said Clark's daughter Erin Cancro while picking up her two daughters from the school on Thursday.

She was working at her job as a teacher in Hauppauge when she got the call her father had been taken to the hospital. Cancro and her father are both supremely grateful to all who assisted.

"To say we were lucky is an understatement," she said.