“I’m a happy man. I’m a lucky man, let’s say that,” David Plotkin said over the phone this week.
Mr. Plotkin turns 50 today. On July 30, he was unconscious on Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett without a pulse and not breathing for more than 15 minutes while a team that included beachgoers and town lifeguards, two of them age 16, furiously performed CPR on him.
“I bought a beach bike last year. I’m addicted to it. I went for a ride with Tammy Mager, my friend’s wife. She’s a sick marathon runner,” said Mr. Plotkin. They left from Treasure Island beach, in Amagansett, around 10:30 a.m.
It was 75 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze. The sea was glassy. A perfect morning. Ms. Mager asked, “Left, or right?”
“I said, ‘Let’s go toward East Hampton so we can see people.’ If you go left toward Montauk, it’s all desolate. Never has a choice been so pertinent in my life where literally it was a flip of a coin. If I went left to Montauk, I’d be dead,” he said.
Mr. Plotkin works in specialty finance, but he also founded the Max Cure Foundation after his son Max was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at age 4, in 2007. Through the foundation, Mr. Plotkin has been able to assist many families, including a few on the East End, as they work through the struggle of pediatric cancer.
He and Ms. Mager biked to Two Mile Hollow Beach in East Hampton and turned around to head back to Atlantic Avenue. Ms. Mager went ahead. “I told her to not worry about me; I go at my own pace. I felt good, my breathing was strong. I do hot yoga daily. I just happened to have two clogged arteries going into this,” said Mr. Plotkin.
As Mr. Plotkin rode east past the Amagansett Beach Association at Indian Wells, something seemed off to those who watched him. A group of beachgoers then noticed him down on the sand and realized he needed help. Lou Terlizzi, a retired Mount Kisco police officer, and a nurse, Maryanne Berg, jumped into action, he performing CPR and she keeping Mr. Plotkin's airways open, while Mr. Terlizzi's daughter ran to alert the Amagansett Beach Association lifeguard Aidan McCormac.
“I went down like Drago getting knocked out by Rocky in Moscow,” said Mr. Plotkin.
Mr. McCormac called the two “down guards,” Luke Ferraro and Jack O’Sullivan, both 16, to the scene. A third, Charlie Goldsmith, was alerted and shortly after, followed them with the automatic external defibrillator.
John Ryan Jr., the head lifeguard for East Hampton Town, said the lifeguards “jumped on him right away.” Mr. McCormac called for backup from the Indian Wells guards, and in less than two minutes, Mr. Plotkin was hooked up to a defibrillator. “The guards delivered two shocks within the first four minutes,” said Mr. Ryan.
For 15 minutes a team, "led by team leader Charlie Goldsmith, cycled in and out of positions, continuing to do CPR while waiting for the ambulance,” said Mr. Ryan. Meanwhile, they had shocked Mr. Plotkin again, but the shocking wasn’t starting his heart.
The automatic external defibrillator “machine says he was hooked up for 16 minutes,” said Mr. Ryan. From the beginning of the situation until the arrival of the ambulance, his heart was in fibrillation for 18 to 19 minutes. Those lifeguards were full on CPR the whole time.”
Mr. Plotkin still had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. The lifeguards had loaded him onto a Marine Patrol truck, which got him to the top of the beach where the ambulance was waiting. The A.E.D. machine advised against another shock.
“That was it for us,” said Mr. Ryan. “The guards just kind of walked off, having to go back to their towers thinking, ‘What the hell just happened?’ Thinking the guy was dead. Just as the ambulance doors were closing, I heard one of the E.M.S. guys say, ‘Hey, we got a heartbeat.’ ”
Mr. Ryan stood by the side of the ambulance, watching his guards walk back to the beach, but listening through the door as the E.M.T.s worked on Mr. Plotkin. “I heard them say, ‘Hey bud, wake up!’ “
Seconds later one of the E.M.T.s poked his head out the door and said, “John, let your guards know this guy has a heartbeat and he’s breathing.”
“They said I was gone for 12 full minutes,” said Mr. Plotkin. “I wasn’t breathing, and I had no pulse. But clearly, their CPR got blood flowing to my brain to keep me alive.”
“When Max was diagnosed with cancer my father told me our lives’ purpose was to be here to protect our children. God forbid if Max’s cancer came back, I wanted to be here for him. He’s been cancer free for 13 years, thank God. I find it amazing that we’ve done so much to help the community, and here, the community helped our family and saved my life,” he said.
Mr. Plotkin was transported by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and stabilized for a couple of days before receiving a stent at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
“With the exception of some short-term memory loss, I feel as strong now as when I went in,” said Mr. Plotkin, who has since dropped 20 pounds.
“I grew up on the beaches of Amagansett and I’ve always taken the lifeguards for granted. I never realized until now that we’re guests on their beach and they’re there for a purpose and reason. They’re not lifeguards, they’re lifesavers,” he said.
“Whoever trained these guys and girls, taught them properly. They were doing their job. They could have been playing around on their phones.”
After hearing from the E.M.T., Mr. Ryan walked back to his guards who were understandably upset. “I walked up to those kids on the stand and said, ‘That guy we just did CPR on for 20 minutes has a heartbeat, and that’s testament to what you did. I can’t say he’s going to live, but you gave him a heartbeat and did everything in your power and gave him the best chance of survival.”
Last weekend, Mr. Plotkin was able to walk down the beach and shake hands with the lifeguards who saved his life. “Which one of you guys broke my rib?” he joked.
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Correction: After this article was first published, the wife of Lou Terlizzi, the retired police officer, reached out to inform The Star that there was more to the story than originally reported. Even before the lifeguards arrived to help David Plotkin, Mr. Terlizzi and a friend, Maryanne Berg, a nurse, had begun performing CPR while Mr. Terlizzi's daughter ran to alert lifeguards.
