Hermosa Beach Police Officer Mick Gaglia was in the right time and right place Wednesday afternoon when an 87-year-old man had a heart attack on Pier Plaza.
“It probably would have gone unnoticed had it not been in the middle of the plaza,” said Gaglia.
Around 4:24 p.m. Gaglia and a woman from the city’s Finance Department were making a bank drop when an employee from the Mexican restaurant Cantina Real flagged him down.
“I’m thinking they had another shop lifter but instead I see this elderly man who was laying across the [stone] blocks like a banana backwards,” Gaglia said. “I saw he was blue like when someone’s dead or almost dead- kind of blue and chalky, and not coherent and completely out of it.”
Gaglia checked his vitals and realized that the man had a very faint heartbeat, if any.
“He was done,” Gaglia said. “So they [onlookers] sat him up and I reached around his back and started doing compressions with my left hand trying to keep him going. He was sitting up, but basically a rag doll and we decided to lay him down and sent out to dispatch that there’s a guy having a massive heart attack.”
Three minutes later the fire department was on the scene.
“In the meantime there’s a crowd gathering around,” said Gaglia. “It didn’t take them long to get there, but it felt like an hour. They rolled up and started ripping open bags with god knows what and brought a deliberator to shock him back. While they’re doing this I’m continuing the compressions.”
Anthony Ayala, a Hermosa Beach resident, saw the the events unfold while enjoying drinks at Silvio’s.
“I thought for sure the guy had passed,” Ayala said. “They were working on him pretty feverishly there and at one point in time I couldn’t see his chest moving and then he went limp. People around me were very concerned and we were hoping to see the guy get up, but it was very unnerving for sure especially thinking that a guy had passed away in front of us.”
Ayala also noticed that nobody in the crowd was on their cell phones or taking pictures.
“Nobody wanted to do that, we just wanted to see what was going to happen,” said Ayala. “We thought we were seeing a man take his last breath.”
While doing CPR chest compressions, Gaglia realized that the man’s dentures had become displaced and he reached into the man’s mouth to take them out so they wouldn’t block his airway.
“Even if you’re a cop, none of this is routine,” said Gaglia. “I don’t check in in the morning and say, ‘Hey I’m gonna save a life today.’ It’s stressful, it’s muggy and I’m hot and sweating. It’s tough”
While doing compressions, Gaglia noticed the man attempting to take two or three shallow breaths.
“It wasn’t heroic, it was just me trying to do what I can do,” said Gaglia. “You could literally see the color come back to his body, it was one of the freakiest things I’ve seen. I’m a cop; I arrest people.”
Eventually the fire department took over and the man started to turn from blue to a pink color.
“I think the fire department worked on him for ten to 15 minutes on the plaza in front of 200 people,” said Gaglia, who added that the man was quickly transported to Little Company of Mary Hospital. “In my personal opinion he was dead or seconds from being dead for sure. That was the first time I’ve had to do something to that effect- I’ve been here 14 years. I’ve done all sorts of crazy things as a cop, but that was the most memorable.”
Sgt. Bob Higgins wrote in a press release that an onlooker with small children described Gaglia’s efforts as “inspirational.”
“That felt better than anything,” said Gaglia about the praise from the crowd.
According to the HBPD, the patient is expected to recover.
“It definitely gave me a sense of security that if god forbid anything happened to me that people would be on top of it,” said Ayala. “Just to know they were able to save the man made my day. At the time I was kind of down- we went to the beach to have fun, but to see something like that was so out of the ordinary.”
According to Ayala, nobody at the scene was able to locate any family or friends, and onlookers were concerned that the man had died alone.
“It definitely confirmed my faith in the police and fire department,” said Ayala.
Until Thursday, Ayala and other bystanders were unsure of the man’s condition.
“If officer Gaglia had not quickly administered CPR, the patient’s fate would have likely been much different,” Higgins wrote in the release.
“It was a wild event. It’s not something I’m used to. I’m used to arresting people and drunks and bank robberies, this was much different,” said Gaglia. “Our fire department is outstanding, I’m looking at him and like they have IV’s and defibs and wazoo stuff, and whatever I did to keep him from dying, they were the ones that ultimately saved his life and made him stable.”
