BREAKING: Lions fan from Texas helps saved a life before Sunday’s Bears game at Soldier Field
Lions fan from Texas helps saved a life before Sunday’s Bears game at Soldier Field. Ben Roth, a paramedic from Texas, was attending the game with his daughter when he saw a man collapse during workouts at Soldier Field. Soldier Field. Sun-Times file. SHARE. COPY LINK. Share. Twitter. Facebook. Email. Pocket. Reddit. Flipboard. Before the Lions beat the Bears on Sunday in Soldier Field, something magical happened on the sideline. “This is the season of miracles,” said Ben Roth, a longtime Lions fan, who happens to be a paramedic from Frisco, Texas.
Who just happened to be at the Bears-Lions game Sunday. Who just happened to get some special field passes to go down on the sideline. But he just happened to be in precisely the right spot, at the right time, to save somebody’s life. “Miracles,” Roth said, his voice trailing off. Indeed. Rooting for Barry Sanders. It all goes back to Barry Sanders. “I’ve been a Lions fan for 35 years,” Roth said. “It started when I saw Barry Sanders play when I was 6 years old. I said, ‘whatever team he gets drafted by will be my favorite team.’”. And that’s how a guy from Frisco, Texas — somebody who works as a firefighter and paramedic in Plano — ended up a Lions season ticket holder. “We usually make it to four to five games a year as a family,” he said, “and I’ll get one or two by myself.”. On Sunday, Roth took Isadora, his 6-year-old daughter, to the game against the Bears and they were sitting in club seats. “As close as you can be without actually being on the field,” he said. That’s when things started to come together in the strangest of ways.
Roth noticed somebody wearing a North Texas shirt. How strange? What are the chances of seeing that at a Bears game? “Because my wife is the head swimming and diving coach for the University of North Texas,” Roth said. “I said, ‘Hey, can I take a picture with your son? My wife’s the head coach at that college.’”. “And he said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’”. So, they took a picture, and they started talking. “He said, ‘Hey, we have two field passes,’” Roth said. “‘My wife got sick yesterday, so if you want to come down with us? We want to get the tickets to a girl dad.’”. Well, Roth is certainly qualified as a girl dad. This was the second time he’s taken his daughter to a Lions game. “I so appreciated it,” Roth said. “Usually, my wife comes, but she’s had enough cold weather games in her lifetime that she’s like, ‘You guys go.’”. So, they used those special passes to go down on the field about an hour before the game. A man collapses. Down on the field, a man collapsed about 12 feet away from Roth. “All I heard was somebody say that somebody just passed out,” Roth said. “So I turned and went to work and started helping.”. At first, they thought the man was having a seizure. But Roth has been a paramedic for 17 years and he’s seen this before.
“A lot of times before you have a heart attack, you have what looks like a seizure,” he said. So, Roth did an incredibly smart thing. He called for an AED (automated external defibrillator) machine before the man’s heart stopped. “Hey, get ready to do CPR,” Roth said. “And they’re like, ‘he has pulse.’”. “I was like, ‘he’s about to lose it.’”. Sure enough, the man’s heart stopped beating. Roth started compressions on the man’s chest, doing CPR, and then stepped back to take charge. “I did a couple compressions, but I knew that we needed to do some more higher end medical stuff,” Roth said. “CPR is one of those things that a lot of people can do with the right training. “So we asked the troopers to do that and then I asked another gentleman to keep track of the time for me, because I didn’t know when we were going to get somebody over there.”. Soldier Field staffers rushed over an AED machine in about 30 or 40 seconds, according to Roth. “We placed the pads on his chest,” Roth said. “The AED identified that he was in a rhythm and needed to be shocked.”.
Roth told everybody to back up. “It can go through the body to another person,” he said. Roth pushed the button and shocked the man’s heart. He was brought back thanks to an entire team effort that included the Bears and Illinois State Troopers. “We continued CPR for a little bit more, just to make sure that it wasn’t a ‘fake get back,’” he said. “Sometimes a person will come back and they’ll immediately go back into arrest.”. But the man did come back. “He came to and I was able to talk to him a little bit,” Roth said. The last Roth saw, the man was being carted off the field. “He was talking to me,” Roth said. “Told me his name, his birthday, about everything.”. And Roth went back to the stands. “The guy I was sitting with said, ‘Hey, Dan Campbell, walked by while you were doing all that stuff,’” Roth said. Wild, right? All the things that came together in that moment? “It’s an adrenaline rush from the aspect of doing my passion, which is helping people,”
Roth said. “But it was a little bit scary, because as a firefighter and a paramedic, you get notified for a call and you have your coworkers with you. Your brothers, your sisters, you have them with you. “You have the equipment, you have an idea what you’re going to do and that it happened right in front of me. So I went back to the very basics and just did CPR. Then once the equipment got there, I felt a lot more comfortable.”. “This is why I became a firefighter,” he continued. “I’m just happy that there was an AED around. I’m happy the Bears staff was able to get there as quick as they did. I was happy I was in the right place. Hopefully he gets to celebrate Christmas with his family.”. All in all, it was a pretty amazing day for Roth. The Lions won. He got to spend time with his daughter. Oh, and he saved a life. “I wanted the Lions to win,” he said, “but this is a far bigger win.”. A true season of miracles. Read more at usatoday.com. SHARE. COPY LINK. Share. Twitter. Facebook. Email. Pocket. Reddit. Flipboard.