Teen athlete survives cardiac arrest in Aurora thanks to bystanders, first responders and on-site AED

Teen athlete survives cardiac arrest in Aurora thanks to bystanders, first responders and on-site AED

It’s hard to imagine that phone call Cathleen Zahn received on the Friday night of July 19.

The mom of three boys was a couple hours away at her home in a Milwaukee suburb when she was told her eldest had suddenly collapsed to the floor during an AAU basketball game in Aurora and people were frantically working over him to keep the 16-year-old alive.

It’s also difficult to understand what it was like for her husband Jeremy, who watched this medical emergency in person that suddenly brought the cheering crowd at Supreme Courts on Frontenac Street to dead silence.

The call Cathy Zahn received came from a coach of her son’s Wisconsin Swing Basketball team. In the background she could hear people helping her son, including two team moms who immediately jumped into action, encouraging Carter to stay with them as they began administering CPR.

“All I could hear was, ‘you can do this, Carter,’” Zahn recalls, also noting a “couple parents from other teams were on their knees praying” while others used an automated external defibrillator (AED) the gym had on site.

All the above, this grateful mom is convinced, saved her son’s life.

According to Nathan Costner, chief of the Aurora Fire Department’s EMS division, paramedics arrived within three minutes of the 911 call, and transported Carter to Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora.

From there, the teen, still unconscious and intubated, said Zahn, was airlifted to Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, where doctors confirmed he had suffered cardiac arrest.

In the meantime, Zahn was making a frantic drive from her home to Chicago, an excruciating journey under unimaginable circumstances made worse when she got stuck in traffic for about 30 minutes.

“It was,” she recalled, “a nightmare.”

But here’s where that mother’s hellish dream turns to a story of gratitude – and a plea for awareness.

After eight days in intensive care, Carter was able to go home last Sunday. According to Zahn, her son is doing remarkably well, insisting he has “a story to tell” that could help save other lives by sharing this experience.

Not that the teen recalls anything of the harrowing ordeal, or of the first three days of his hospital stay, where a battery of tests failed to turn up any reasons for ventricular fibrillation – a life-threatening type of irregular heart rhythm that occurs when the heart’s lower chambers quiver or twitch instead of pumping blood.

While it’s most common in people with heart disease or a history of heart attacks, the exact cause isn’t always known, according to Dr. Stuart Berger, head of pediatric cardiology at Lurie Children’s Hospital and co-director of its Heart Center.

There is a subset of kids, he told me, who have electrical problems with their hearts, and another group who experience cardiac arrest “out of the blue” but had an underlying problem that did not manifest until later. The third group, he said, is “where the underlying problem is never found,” but we “know what to do to mitigate the issue in the future.”

Indeed, Carter had no previous symptoms, nor did tests turn up any reason for the attack, said his mom, who also noted that her son received no direct hit and because the game was only five minutes old he wasn’t even “gassed” when suddenly collapsing to the floor.

The doctors, Zahn told me, “are stumped.” But as a preventative measure, the teen is wearing a ZOLL LifeVest, which detects life-threatening rapid heart rhythms, and within the next two months he will have an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator placed under the skin. Similar to a pacemaker, it will continually monitor his heart rhythm and if it detects a cardiac episode, will send a shock to reset the heart’s rhythm.

I spoke this past week with both Carter and his mother, who want to express their thanks to all who stepped in so quickly as he fought for life. Those include the two moms – one was a coach, another a physician’s assistant, Zahn said – and other medical professionals who were in the gym.

They are also grateful Supreme Courts had an AED that was able to deliver shocks through the chest wall to help restore a regular heart rhythm until paramedics were able to take over.

“We knew the AEDs were important but didn’t realize how critical they really are,” she said.

That point was emphasized by Aurora EMT Chief Costner, who noted that “early defibrillation is the number one factor in survivability for an event like this.”

No one knows that more than Lurie’s Dr. Berger, who was working at Milwaukee Children’s Hospital 25 years ago when he founded Project Adam, along with the parents of 17-year-old Adam Lemel, who did not survive a similar episode.

The goal of this organization is to “make the community more aware that sudden cardiac arrest does happen in young people” and that there are ways to intervene to prevent death.

Project Adam, he told me, is now in 33 states. That includes Illinois, which Berger started eight years ago when he arrived at Lurie and “realized we have to have one in Chicago and get the word out across the state.”

At least 300 lives have been saved, he said, because people have been adequately trained in CPR and have AEDs on site, including schools and gymnasiums. But more of these devices should be available, he noted, including in churches, community centers, shopping areas or “wherever there are large gatherings of people.”

The key is not just to have the AED available but have people trained on how to use it, said Berger, who is thrilled the NFL is now partnering with Project Adam.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, he said, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who survived cardiac arrest during a nationally televised game in 2023, stopped by Lurie’s to visit with Berger about his involvement with the organization.

The doctor is thrilled that Carter and his family also want to be part of this awareness push. As this family learned, it can happen to anyone. And the community needs to be aware, said Berger, “of what to do so we can save many lives going forward.”

Carter, who has been playing sports since age 5, has decided to give up football after this scare, but is hoping to make a return to basketball, including on the courts of Franklin High School, where he will be a junior – and a kid with a story to tell.

“I can’t feel it now, but 100% my life has changed,” he told me. “I have a different outlook; definitely more mature.”