When a 76-year-old man collapsed Friday evening while dining at Si Si, a Mediterranean restaurant on Three Mile Harbor, two quick-thinking strangers trained in CPR resuscitated him, not once but twice.
Nick Jarboe, a trainer at East Hampton High School who also works at Sports Physical Therapy East in Amagansett, was eating dinner with his co-worker Paloma Tavera when the two heard a shout from a nearby table. “Help me! Help my husband!”
A man had fallen out of his chair, seemingly unconscious. After rushing from his table to help, Mr. Jarboe checked the man’s pulse. “He had none, and he wasn’t breathing,” Ms. Tavera said. Soon Alex Anagnostidis arrived from another table to assist.
“He fell back off his chair, and I ran up there,” recounted Mr. Anagnostidis, an actor who learned CPR through his 30 years as a rescue diver. The two performed “CPR, mouth-to-mouth, and chest compressions,” said Mr. Anagnostidis.
The man regained consciousness after a minute and a half of chest compressions. Mr. Jarboe and Mr. Anagnostidis asked him questions including his name, where he lives, and his age. After answering them, he collapsed again. This time, he had a pulse but he was still not breathing. That’s when Si Si employees arrived from the marina with a defibrillator, said Mr. Anagnostidis.
Ms. Tavera hooked up the defibrillator and then read the instructions on the outside. “If the subject is breathing, start compressions,” Ms. Tavera read. Mr. Jarboe then restarted chest compressions. After another minute or so of compressions, he again regained consciousness.
“His wife was with me,” said Ms. Tavera. “I was trying to calm her, asking her questions. She was in shock. She told me that he had had a stress test in the past week and that he had done fine. I told his wife that he must have passed out when he saw the bill!”
“He held Nick’s hand the whole time,” said Ms. Tavera, who said that Mr. Jarboe had too much humility to ever “blow his own horn.”
A police officer arrived on scene with an assisted breathing apparatus and an oxygen tank and two emergency medical technicians. The man was taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.
“The last I saw or heard of him, he was okay, he was on oxygen, and they were wheeling him out,” Mr. Anagnostidis said Monday. He had gotten the man’s name, but “I didn’t know what the outcome was,” he said.
On Tuesday, The Star spoke with him, and although he asked not to be named, he talked about the experience and expressed gratitude to the people who came to his aid. “I can’t express how outstanding the people were, all around,” said the man, a trauma surgeon with a house in Springs.
In the ambulance, he was conscious and capable of answering questions. He spent about six hours in the emergency room, where he said doctors performed a C.T. scan and concluded that he likely lost consciousness due to dehydration. They could not find any cardiac issues, he said.
Earlier that day, he had swum 40 laps. He drank lots of water in the morning, but only had one glass of water in the afternoon. “To be on the other end of the boat is very interesting,” he said of being the one needing the care rather than the one providing it. “I don’t want to be there.”
He praised the “caring individuals” who helped him, including the two men, Ms. Tavera, and the E.M.T.s, who he said arrived “right away.”
“Today, everyone is so frightened of doing things like that,” he said. “It’s nice to see people still caring.”
Mr. Anagnostidis, who will appear in HBO’s upcoming show “The Penguin,” emailed The Star that Friday night hoping someone might have heard how the man was. “I just want to know that the man is ok and made it,” he wrote. When he heard the good news Tuesday, he said, “I’m so glad.”
“It’s the first time he’s saved a person’s life,” Ms. Tavera said of Mr. Jarboe. “His record is 1-0 at the moment.” Mr. Jarboe had not returned a call for comment as of press time, nor had the manager of the restaurant.
With Reporting by Jack Graves
