Grandmother meets man who saved her life
On Tuesday, Lucus Yearous got to meet the woman he saved, when he was given an award by Medford fire

A few weeks after saving the life of a complete stranger in the plumbing aisle of the Lowe’s Home Improvement store in Medford June 26, Lucus Yearous got the chance Tuesday to meet the White City woman he saved.

At a meeting arranged by the Medford Fire Department to honor Yearous, Cherol Langfield smiled and took a deep breath as she was introduced to Yearous outside Fire Station 5 on Roberts Road.

Yearous, 31, of Medford, admitted his motivation for attending was to know that the mother and grandmother, who had stopped breathing that Sunday evening, was alive and well.

Yearous embraced Langfield, closing his eyes as he smiled.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Yearous told her.

“Thank you. I’m glad you knew what to do,” Langfield responded. “Because I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

Statistically, Deputy Chief Devon Brown told those in attendance, Langfield, 65, had an 8.8% chance of “surviving to discharge” after a cardiac incident involving “out-of-hospital CPR.”

An even lower percentage, Brown said, would be the number of bystanders who step in to perform CPR when a stranger goes into cardiac arrest.

Tuesday, however, was less about statistics and more about a happy ending.

Yearous credited his being at the Medford Lowe’s to a series of “factors” that put him in the right place at the right time.

Yearous, who had trained with South Lane County Fire and Rescue in Cottage Grove, admits he likely had more CPR practice than most. Two weekends ago, he was just a guy with a burst pipe and a girlfriend who needed a shower.

A previous owner of the house he bought in February had installed a water pipe right next to the driveway, “so I’m pulling in and, of course, I hit that pipe,” he said. “So I’m digging in the ground trying to find the valve and can’t get the water shut off. … Long story short, we end up getting it shut off, with both of us in the ground turning it with two crescent wrenches, and I clipped a tiny piece off to size it at the hardware store,” said Yearous.

“So I’m standing in the driveway after a really long day. It’s almost 8:30 at night and Lowe’s was closing in a half hour.”

Gesturing toward his girlfriend, Kaitlyn Gresser, Yearous continued, “I asked her, how bad do you want a shower tonight?”

A short time later, Yearous was in Lowe’s, where he found Langfield in distress, on the ground and struggling to breathe.

“I saw her down in the aisle with her grandson, and the Lowe’s guy was sprinting down the aisle with a seat cushion to put under her head. I ran over and assessed her. The first thing I did was take the cushion out from under her head to open her airway,” he said.

“She was in agonal breathing. I did a capillary check, and her hands were going cold. I started to feel for a carotid pulse, and there was none. The grandson had called 911, and I told him to put it on speaker so I could let paramedics know that I was administering CPR.”

For over 20 minutes, Yearous maintained blood flow by doing chest compressions until paramedics arrived to take over life-saving measures and transport Langfield to the hospital. Mercy Flights paramedic Frankie George said Yearous, without a doubt, saved Langfield’s life.

“To begin CPR the moment that someone goes into cardiac arrest increases their chance of living and their heart restarting exponentially,” George said.

“When we have bystander perform CPR ... we see much higher chances of survival. The number of times we’ll get on scene and there are people just standing and watching and not doing anything, because they don’t know what to do, is really sad and really frustrating.”

Brown said that despite so many CPR classes taking place and so many citizens being certified, it’s not the norm for bystanders to step in during an emergency.

“It really takes a lot of courage and just being able to maintain your situational awareness to focus in and take care of a task that critical,” Brown said.

“It’s still tough for us, and we do it every day, so for a bystander to come in and do something like that is impressive.”

To see Langfield walking and talking Tuesday was a tribute to Yearous.

“When cardiac arrest happens, getting that hands-on CPR quickly is why she’s standing here today, neurologically intact. If you have that down time, even 5 to 10 minutes, you start to lose the oxygen in your brain, cells start to die and physiologic death starts to take over,” said Brown.

“To see her smiling and talking and standing here not even a month later is incredible.”

Langfield, unable to remember anything between going into cardiac arrest and waking up in the ER, said it was hard to put into words her gratitude for what Yearous had done for her.

“If it hadn’t been for Lucus and his early intervention, I might not be here right now,” she said, adding that she was grateful to be around for her three children, eight grandkids and four great-grandkids.

“I’m just very thankful every morning. I just feel like, thank you God,” she said.

Asked whether she was CPR certified, Langfield said, “No. But I’m going to be now.”

Brown offered a favorite quote to Yearous.

“John Wayne said, ‘Courage is being scared but saddling up and going in anyway.’ And that’s what you did on June 26,” said Brown.

“There are a lot of people in today’s world who may have continued about their business, looked the other way or just sat there helplessly while Miss Langfield slipped further and further into unconsciousness. But you knew what to do, and that day you saddled up and you did the job.”

One more stroke of luck for Yearous on that hot summer evening two weeks ago — he ended up finding the 67-cent piece of pipe he needed before Lowe’s closed.

And his girlfriend got her shower.

“We still went home and fixed the pipe,” Yearous added with a laugh.