Christian Quarm was among the last people Danielle Desmond expected to see at a CPR class she taught at Shore Lodge earlier this month.
Just over three weeks earlier, Quarm’s heart stopped twice as Desmond and other first responders raced to administer CPR and electrical shocks.
Quarm was working a morning shift as Shore Lodge’s banquet manager when he suffered a widow-maker heart attack, which is aptly named for its propensity to quickly kill victims. Most people don’t survive widow-makers, much less come back to take a CPR course just weeks later.
“In my 30 years, I’ve never seen that,” said Desmond, who leads McCall Fire’s program for community CPR education. “That’s probably one of the more awe-inspiring moments I think I’ll experience in my career.”
Quarm, 50, had taken a CPR class about 15 years ago, but wanted to refresh his skills as a measure of gratitude for bystanders and first responders who performed CPR on him.
“It just seemed like the right thing to do, really,” he said.
‘It was like slow motion’
Quarm was only at work for a little over an hour on the morning of June 19 when he noticed something was wrong. He was setting up for a banquet that day, quickly moving supplies around in a closet to pull chairs needed for the banquet.
But he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He reasoned that he was having a panic attack, but the usual breathing techniques he uses to calm himself proved futile. Then he hit the floor.
April Abad was managing The Cutwater on Payette Lake that morning and had spoken with Quarm minutes earlier. She did not know anything was wrong, but said she saw him begin to collapse and ran over to try to catch him.
“It was like in slow motion,” said Abad, who thinks of Quarm as a big brother. “I literally slowly watched his life come out of his eyes.”
Help arrives
Abad did not know CPR, but quickly began screaming for help and called 911. Her cries for help were heard by two people attending a nearby banquet who knew CPR. They began compressions while waiting for first responders to arrive.
McCall Fire and EMS received the 911 call at 8:34 a.m. McCall Police Department Sgt. Nate Kimmel was near Shore Lodge at the time of the call and responded at 8:35 a.m.
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Kimmel, who was involved in a similar situation in 2023, immediately took over CPR and administered a shock to Quarm’s heart from an automated external defibrillator.
“As a law enforcement officer, your mindset in responding to a cardiac arrest should be to act quickly and confidently,” Kimmel said.
By 8:39 a.m., McCall Fire arrived on scene and took over CPR. A second AED shock was administered to Quarm’s heart. Finally, his pulse returned and he resumed breathing on his own. He was then stabilized and taken to St. Luke’s McCall before being flown by helicopter to St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, where two stents were placed in his heart.
Quarm counts himself lucky to be alive, but said his brush with death will not change his approach to life.
“I’ve always been kind of a happy-go-lucky person before this and still want to be that person,” he said. “I consider this an encore performance.”
Bystander CPR fueling success stories
Quarm is the latest in a string of CPR saves in the McCall area that Interim Fire Chief Mike Bertrand simply can’t explain.
McCall Fire sees eight to 12 cardiac arrest calls per year. It would be lucky, Bertrand said, for even one or two of those calls to result in “total saves” in which the patients not only survive, but make complete recoveries.
But in the last year or so alone, McCall Fire has logged four total saves—more than Bertrand saw during a 33-year stint in a busy San Diego EMS system.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “I think it’s just because we have the quick (CPR) response from bystanders and we have the AEDs.”
Fewer than 10% of patients who suffer a heart attack outside of a hospital survive, according to the American Heart Association.
However, survival rates can double or triple when patients receive immediate CPR.
Desmond, a firefighter/paramedic who leads McCall Fire’s community CPR training initiatives, said the string of recent success stories is no coincidence.
“In our county, we’ve had successful cardiac arrest saves because bystanders didn’t hesitate to perform CPR and had access to an AED, providing a shock before EMS arrived,” she said. “Without immediate intervention, irreversible brain damage can occur within five minutes.”
Desmond said everyone should practice CPR at least once per year. She leads formal classes several times a year, but free online classes are also available, along with loaner manikins that people can borrow from McCall Fire to practice.
“I encourage people to have a CPR party, especially around the holidays,” she said. “The odds are you’re going to be doing it on somebody you know and somebody you love.”
Classes are also periodically offered by emergency response agencies in Donnelly and Cascade.
