After Gary Hobish collapsed while swing-dancing with friends in Golden Gate Park Sunday, a fellow dancer raced to the nearby de Young Museum in search of a defibrillator. Most people in the group knew Hobish, 70, had a heart condition. Seconds counted.
Inside the museum, Tim O’Brien found himself pleading with a staff member to let him use the life-saving device, or to accompany him back to where Hobish, a legend of the Bay Area music scene, lay unconscious. O’Brien offered the museum staffer his wallet and his watch as collateral.
The museum staffer checked with his boss, but the answer was firm: The de Young defibrillator could not leave the building.
O’Brien sprinted empty handed back to the group, where a doctor who had luckily been on the scene was administering CPR. Paramedics arrived a few minutes later, but by then nearly 10 minutes had gone by, O’Brien said.
But I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends
Every CPR class will teach you that if it’s available to grab a defibrillator and let it do its thing while you do CPR and if it wants to do a shock, that you let it. No harm in actually doing the shocks, like I was taught, you’re not going to make their day any worse by breaking ribs or shocking them. For a bystander that didn’t know this person’s medical history, they made the right decision to seek out a defibrillator. Would it have saved them, probably not. Does that change the fact that the Museum’s actions were terrible? No.
Acting like untrained civilians are working with a crash cart and not the briefcase is also silly. In any hospital they’ll start up with the automatic mode of any defibrillator before there’s a doctor present to give orders. In the end, the people involved did what they could and acting like they’re irresponsible and ignorant goes against what could potentially save lives in the larger picture. No doubt this guy was fucked, most people are when their heart stops working properly.