After a day out with friends, Andrea Rogers decided to spend some time alone in Webster Park by the shoreline. She was experiencing a headache, and the calming scenery usually helps.
Hours passed as Rogers found herself in and out of naps. She was then awakened by a loud “boom” — accompanied by a bright light and the frantic scream of a teenager running toward the parking lot from the shoreline bridge.
“She came screaming, like bloody murder, like something had happened,” Rogers said. “I couldn't hear what she was saying because I was inside my car, but I could hear the scream.”
Curious, Rogers got out of her car and made her way to the commotion on the bridge. As she got closer, she made out a group of people surrounding a teenager on the ground — discolored, with her clothes shredded, and bloody from what appeared to be a cut on her chin.
“When I first got to the scene, she did not look good,” Rogers said. “Somebody said, ‘Yes, she got hit by lightning.’”
It was about 8 p.m. Saturday evening, and Rogers recalled watching the storm move across the calm waters from her vehicle. She said the third flash of lightning is what created the havoc. When she got to the bridge, she volunteered to switch places with a man already attempting to perform CPR on the young lady. Rogers said she made it known that she was CPR-trained and they switched places.
“It was very surreal," Rogers said. "I just saw the need, and I did the thing."
Jeremy Cushman, EMS medical director for Monroe County and the city of Rochester, has long stressed the importance of bystanders starting chest compressions when they witness a sudden cardiac arrest. He said every minute that goes by where a person in cardiac arrest does not receive CPR to keep blood flowing to the brain, the chance of survival decreases by 10%.
In Monroe County, community interest in learning CPR has waned since a year and a half ago, when interest spiked after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s collapse on the football field. But, Cushman said, the community needs more people who can step up in a cardiac arrest crisis, as Rogers did.
“We need everybody's help to be able to save a life,” he said.
Rogers has been a surgical technologist at UR Medicine for almost 25 years. She works in the operating room at Highland Hospital, and at the surgery center in Marketplace Mall. Despite her experience in trauma, Rogers said she has never been hands-on with such a young patient, and it was her first time doing CPR. However, the frequent training at her workplace allowed her to perform the procedure confidently on that bridge.
“It was almost like in my head I was on the mannequin, and I just felt so secure. I knew where to press. It was almost like I could feel her, and I knew the boundary of pressing,” Rogers said.
According to the American Heart Association, about 40% of people who experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest last year received CPR from a bystander before professional help arrived.
“Our EMS system, our fire departments, first responders, all those folks can't get patients to go home from the hospital unless we have a bystander that steps up and starts CPR,” Cushman said.
When faced with a cardiac emergency, Cushman said individuals should “activate the chain of survival," which begins by calling 911.
“Don't worry about inconveniencing us," Cushman said. "Don't worry about not being sure. Just call 911 and get bystander CPR rolling, because literally every minute counts.”
Rogers has since visited the young woman at the hospital, and she said she is doing well.
At work, she is being praised for her heroism, a term that she shies away from.
“That's almost too big of a word for me,” she said. “I'm just truly grateful that the outcome was positive.”
