A frightening scene unfolded at a championship basketball game this week when referee Joe Gaskin suffered a major cardiac event and collapsed during play; thankfully, his longtime friend and Wantagh School District Athletic Director, Jennifer Keane, was on-hand, and heroically left to action and helped to resuscitate the fallen official.
And this, shockingly, actually isn't the first time she's saved a life in this manner.
Keane, 47, was at the Nassau County Class A final between Floral Park and West Hempstead at Farmingdale State College when Gaskin, 64, fell to the court, complaining of being short of breath; he would later be diagnosed with having suffered a cardiac arrest.
Keane, along with a doctor and nurses, rushed to check upon the beleaguered man.
““I just jumped up and ran right over to him," Keane said. "I could hear that he was struggling to breathe and started to turn blue, the doctor was saying that he had a pulse, and then all of a sudden he said, 'No pulse.'"
While family nurse practitioner Tiffany Vargas began chest compressions and two other nurses cut off Gaskin's shirt, Keane ran to retrieve a automated external defibrillator (AED) and set it up for the doctor to use; thankfully, their efforts to save the ref's life were successful.
“I just kept saying, ‘Joe, stay with us.’ I just kept calling his name,” Keane said. “When he came back, I just kept saying, ‘Joe, we got you. You’re OK. We got you,’ and I kept holding his hand.”
“When I woke up, I said ‘Jen, I’m so excited to see your face instead of God’s,” Gaskin said from his hospital bed Tuesday night. “I want to see my grandkids grow up.”
That evening represented history repeating itself, as 18 years prior Keane had saved the life of a custodian by utilizing an AED while she was the athletic trainer at Jericho High School.