Timing, training saved Jasmine Andrews, 12, from heart attack

LAKE STEVENS — She was playing with her best friend and a little black puppy when she collapsed in a Lake Stevens cul de sac.

Her heart stopped. Her breathing ceased.

She was only 12.

What happened next was a remarkable series of events, the nexus of timing and training, exemplary emergency medical care, a child’s quick thinking, a mother’s resolve and a husband who pawed through his wife’s purse to retrieve a ringing cellphone.

On that Friday afternoon in late October, everything that could go right did go right.

And that is why Jasmine Andrews was able to stop by Lake Stevens Fire Hall No. 82 the other day to thank the paramedics who helped give her a second chance at life.

Jasmine smiled broadly, listened intently and nodded often. It is not that the Lake Stevens Middle School seventh-grader is shy, she most certainly is not, but the reunion was a chance to quietly study faces and soak up details of an event she cannot remember.

Likewise, her visit meant a lot to veteran paramedics Eric Jones and Jon Dudder who often wondered what became of the girl in the cul de sac.

“It takes your breath away,” Jones said, shortly after meeting Jasmine.

“It is touching, just seeing her there, seeing her so well adjusted, seeing her so happy,” Dudder said.

After school Oct. 23, Jasmine asked her mom if she could take the afternoon off from taekwondo to hang out with her classmate, Xianna Matthews, a couple of blocks away.

The two were playing outside with the puppy, not doing anything strenuous, when Jasmine keeled over.

Xianna rummaged through her friend’s pockets where she found her cellphone, scrolled down the contact list and called the number for Jasmine’s mom.

Crystalle Green’s cellphone was in her purse in the kitchen. She was in a bedroom and didn’t hear it ringing.

Her husband, Robby, did, but he’d never been one to venture into his wife’s purse. For some reason, at that moment on that day, he dug in. The incoming number was from Jasmine’s phone. He answered and handed the phone to his wife.

Xianna explained that Jasmine fell, was unconscious and Green needed to come right away.

Green told Xianna to call 911. She jumped into her car and arrived a minute later.

Something didn’t add up for Green, a medical assistant, when she first saw her daughter.

If all Jasmine did was fall and hit her head, why wasn’t she breathing?

Jasmine was born with a hole in her heart. The defect was surgically repaired 11 years ago. All her checkups with cardiologists had been positive. She was a healthy saxophone-playing, horseback-riding, martial arts student who’d earned the rank of red belt, just below black belt, in taekwondo.

By her calculations, Green had a half second to react.

She couldn’t cry. There was no time.

She began CPR with Xianna’s mother relaying advice from a 911 dispatcher.

For four minutes, an eternity it seemed, Green pushed on her daughter’s chest. She wanted to take breaks to give her daughter air, but was told to stick with the compressions.

Jones and EMT Duncan were the first medical team to arrive. On the way, Jones thought that the patient’s age must have been reported wrong. Over the years, he’d tended babies born with life-threatening conditions and older teens who’d overdosed, but a 12-year-old girl with cardiac arrest was a call he’d never encountered.

When he came upon Green hunched over her daughter, he was struck by the mother’s chest compressions. Their depth, their rate, their location, were all spot on. The technique was textbook.

“Mom, you have done a good job,” he told her. “We are here now.”

They brought out a defibrillator, placed the paddles on the child’s chest and pumped 200 joules of electrical current to her heart before resuming CPR. They inserted a breathing tube and gave her sedatives.

Jasmine made a slight grunting sound. There was a hint of purposeful movement, a first sign of hope.

Jones briefed an emergency room doctor at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett on the drive there. Yes, he repeated, they were bringing in a 12-year-old girl with cardiac arrest.

In the ER, the medical team took over, preparing Jasmine for the helicopter flight to Children’s Hospital in Seattle.

There were some positive signs.

Green climbed in beside the pilot, her daughter tended to by a medical team in the back. As the helicopter whirred away, paramedic Jones high-fived the ER medical staff in Everett: The child was alive.

At Children’s, Jasmine’s condition improved rapidly. By 1 a.m., she was taken off the ventilator.

That night, Green met with Jasmine’s longtime cardiologist, Dr. Aarti Bhat.

“She is almost our black belt,” the doctor told her. “This is our Jasmine. This isn’t supposed to happen.”

It turned out that Jasmine’s cardiac arrest was unrelated to her birth defect. It was an electrical issue with her heart called ventricular defibrillation.

As she recovered, Jasmine would wake up, ask a few questions then slip back into sleep.

Typically, the conversations were short with Jasmine asking where she was and what had happened.

There were other memorable moments, both comical and profound.

“Mommy, where’s my retainer?” Jasmine would ask.

Even in her narcotic haze, Jasmine was ever conscientious. One of the family’s pugs chewed up her last one and she worried. This one, too, was a lost cause. It flipped out of her mouth during CPR.

Jasmine also told her mom that she saw her standing on the sidewalk and “my angels brought me to you.”

And: “When someone sets your limit, you grab the bar and rise above.”

Her mother is mystified by the words that came out of Jasmine’s mouth.

“That was not her terminology,” Green said. “It was not a series of words she would have put together.”

Green was thankful for all the support her daughter received. Jasmine’s father, Donnie Andrews, caught the first flight he could find out of Kodiak, Alaska, to be by her side as she healed.

During her hospital stay, doctors implanted in Jasmine a device that is both a pacemaker and defibrillator. It can be monitored from Seattle and adjusted remotely.

Jasmine came home on Halloween. She didn’t get to dress up as a huntress with bow and arrow as she’d planned, but her 5-year-old brother, Eric, and her cousins collected a bounty of candy for her.

Two weeks later, Jasmine returned to school. More than 20 friends volunteered to carry her books and run interference. Word spread quickly that the girl who nearly died was back in class.

Jasmine can no longer engage in contact sports, which means she’ll likely never get to earn her black belt. She’s back playing the saxophone in band and looking forward to getting a new horse. She’s also grateful to strangers and friends, particularly Xianna.

“We’re even closer now because of it,” she said.

Green often thinks about that day, how everything in life can change in an instant, how she thought she was going to crack every rib in her daughter’s chest during CPR and how important it is for others to know the life-saving technique.

She is hoping to see it taught in earlier grades, which also is a goal of the Lake Stevens Fire District.

“We are going in that direction,” assistant fire marshal David Petersen said.

As with many 911 calls, Jones replays what happened. He credits Green with saving her daughter’s life. He wonders if there was anything that could have been done better. Two months later, he can’t think of anything.

“You are just on Cloud 9,” he said after meeting with Jasmine. “These are the cases you love.”

Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.