GILROY
– It’s too late for Gary Filice, but his friends and loved ones
are hoping his death will eventually save lives at Gilroy parks,
gyms, golf courses and libraries.
GILROY – It’s too late for Gary Filice, but his friends and loved ones are hoping his death will eventually save lives at Gilroy parks, gyms, golf courses and libraries.
And thanks to the Desperadoes, those hopes could become reality.
Compiled of Filice’s former softball teammates, the Desperadoes are leading the lobby to place automatic external defibrillators in Gilroy’s public parks and buildings.
Defibrillators are the compact devices used to revive people suffering from cardiac arrest. If one had been available at the Gavilan College softball field on July 1, 1998, Filice, a husband and father of two boys, likely wouldn’t have died at age 42.
“If a defibrillator was at the ballfield that day, Gary would be here,” said Ron Erskine, a close friend, brother-in-law, business partner and long-time softball teammate of Filice’s who witnessed Filice clutch his chest and fall to the ground while in the on-deck circle during the Desperadoes’ 1998 softball game.
“A couple of the guys on the team tried CPR, but it wasn’t working,” Erskine said. “It seemed like it took the ambulance a long time to get there, and Gary never got up.”
Filice – who was 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighed a slender 180 pounds, exercised regularly, lived healthy and had no history of heart trouble – had suffered a cardiac arrest.
Filice’s teammates, friends and family were shocked at his untimely passing, but as time went on they learned that his death could’ve been prevented.
That’s when Erskine and fellow Desperado teammates began to organize fund-raising efforts to help the city purchase defibrillators.
The hope is that Gilroy will follow the trend of other cities across the country which have installed the defibrillators at golf courses, sports facilities, churches, libraries, courthouses, parks and airports within the last few years.
“Studies have found that defibrillators are the best way to prevent cardiac cases from death or permanent brain damage,” said Geoff Cady, the Fire-EMS Analyst for the Gilroy Fire Department who is in the beginning stages of developing a proposal for City Council that if approved would place defibrillators in some of Gilroy’s public places.
“Once somebody has a heart attack, they can go four to six minutes without blood to the brain before serious damage starts,” Cady said. “After four minutes there’s a 20 percent chance of survival, but if they are shocked within the first one to two minutes there’s an 80 percent chance of survival – that’s the difference a defibrillator makes.”
While the GFD carries defibrillators on every engine, they rarely respond to an emergency medical call within three minutes, although they almost always arrive on the scene before American Medical Response paramedics.
That’s why the Desperadoes feel so strongly about defibrillators, and organizations such as the American Heart Association, the City of San Jose and the New York High School Athletics Association agree.
Recent technological improvements have made the defibrillators extremely user friendly, and by the late 1990s the American Heart Association was authorizing their use by the public.
San Jose hosts defibrillators in several city buildings, and the devices are required at all public high school sporting events in New York.
“They have become very simple to use with minimal training,” Cady said. “Ideally, wherever the devices are placed there would be a person who gets trained (on the defibrillator) – an umpire, golf pro, a building worker – so when a cardiac case happens, they can apply the shock. But there are also written instructions on the device, so if no trained personnel are around, the device can be used by someone without training.”
Once turned on, a defibrillator will read a person’s heartbeat and, if necessary, deliver a shock to return the heart to normal rhythm. This is often done in a much shorter time frame than it takes a paramedic to arrive at a trauma scene, and the recent advances in defibrillator technology have made their use much safer.
Cady said the only thing that might keep the city from purchasing defibrillators is the cost – especially with the recent budget doldrums.
But through various events and donations, the Desperadoes have already raised enough money to buy two of the $2,500 devices for the city, and Erskine is hoping to raise more money, along with community awareness.
“If it could save one husband or father’s life, it would be worth it,” said Kathleen Filice-Arde, Gary Filice’s wife of 17 years and mother of his two children, Kevin, 20, and Brian, 16. “From what all of the doctors told me, there isn’t much doubt that a defibrillator would’ve really helped (Gary’s) chances.”
While the Desperadoes have earmarked $5,000 to donate to the city for defibrillators, they have also started a non-profit endowment in Filice’s name with the help of the Gilroy Foundation.
Every year the fund provides $500 in scholarships through the Gilroy Parks and Recreation Department to pay the registration fees of local kids who can’t afford to play city sports.
Erskine said in the future a public defibrillator could help save one of those kids’ lives.
“We could’ve given the $5,000 to the American Hearth Association,” Erskine said. “But we figured it would just end up buying some new waste baskets in their offices. … We want to make sure the money got to the city and hope that what happened to Gary doesn’t have to happen again.”
To make a donation to the Gary Filice Memorial Fund call the Gilroy Foundation at 842-3727, or go to www.gilroyfoundation.com. For more information about defibrillators, call Ron Erskine at Coast Range Brewing Company at
842-1000.
