Two women letting agents have been recognised for saving a man’s life when he collapsed with a heart attack in their office.
Sharon Shankster, 58, lettings manager at Northfields in Ealing, London, and lettings negotiator Noura Mehdinejad, 23, saved carpet fitter Jerry Fitzgerald after being inspired – and reassured – by Vinnie Jones’ TV adverts.
The incident happened last January and the pair were too modest to talk about what they had done.
But now the British Heart Foundation has mentioned the pair, citing them in a list of 28 life-saving incidents directly attributed to the Vinnie Jones adverts, which have just been relaunched on TV.
In the advert, Jones is shown performing chest compressions, pumping to the rhythm of the Bee Gees hit Stayin’ Alive.
Sharon recalled the drama, which started when a young colleague of Mr Fitzgerald’s rushed downstairs to the office, saying he had been taken ill.
Sharon ran upstairs to where the three-strong team had been fitting carpeting in part of the office. She had never previously performed heart massage before and said: “The poor gentleman was lying on the floor, turning blue and not breathing.
“Inside, I was in a panic, but on the outside I was calm as I remembered the advert. I said to the man’s two colleagues, ‘Sing the song’! But they didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Then Noura arrived with a phone and on the end of it, someone from emergency who helped talk me through it – and with Noura’s presence and encouragement, that helped a lot.”
Sharon kept going with the chest compressions for around 15 minutes, when the paramedic arrived, and then continued as he requested her help until the ambulance reached the scene another five minutes later.
She said: “It honestly felt like an eternity, and after it was over, I just sat down absolutely exhausted.”
Mr Fitgerald spent some time in intensive care and underwent a triple heart bypass. His family – who sent Sharon flowers to thank her – had to remake some of their plans, with his daughter postponing her wedding in New Zealand in order to return home to visit her father. But last month, the wedding went ahead – and Mr Fitzgerald was there.
The British Heart Foundation’s relaunched TV campaign once again features Jones, together with a man whose life was saved on a golf course.
The Foundation said 28 people had been saved as a direct result of the original ad. But it warned that cardiac arrest survival rates in England are still dire, with only one in five people living through them.
Professor Peter Weissberg, the charity’s medical director, said: “The great thing about hands-only CPR is you don’t need any special skills or remember how to do the kiss of life.
“It’s simple, you can’t do any harm and you may save a life. We know people who are alive today simply because the person next to them when they collapsed did what Vinnie told them to do in our advert.”
Sharon said: “The important lesson is – don’t waste any time seeing if you can find a pulse or anything else. Just get on with it. As the charity says, you can’t do any harm, and you may save a life.”
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