Beyond the call: Dignity Health Physical Therapy employee helps save a life

Gloria Trujillo is accustomed to seeing people outside of her office window at the Dignity Health Physical Therapy center in Las Vegas.

There is a fenced, vacant lot behind the building where vagrants often gather, so foot traffic occurs throughout the day.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Friday, May 2, a 22-year-old man flopping in the dirt field behind the building’s wrought iron fence caught the attention of the center’s employees. Initially, they thought he was being silly, maybe looking for attention. Then he stopped moving completely.

Gloria, a senior patient service specialist for the past four years, immediately called 911 once she learned the stranger had accidentally overdosed. The dispatcher alerted emergency medical personnel, and then asked Gloria to go out to the lot to get a better look.

Clutching the cordless office phone, which she feared would cut out at any moment, Gloria hurried down the side of the parking lot, around the fence and into the lot, where the man was face down and gasping for what could have been his final breath.

“The 911 operator had me turn him on his back, and I couldn’t do CPR for several reasons,” she said. “He had blood all over his mouth, he had rocks all over his mouth. But I started doing chest compressions.”

Gloria, 44 and a mother of three, had never administered any type of CPR before. She’s not certified. But she was the one with the phone, and a man was dying. There was little choice.

Gloria didn’t contemplate the severity of the situation. She didn’t have time to be scared or to panic. She listened to the dispatcher, did what he instructed and hoped it would be enough.

“I just wanted the kid to live,” she said. “I just wanted to see him breathe on his own again.”

Putting others first

Gloria’s not sure how many times she pushed on the man’s chest in the three-to-five minutes it took for trained medical help to arrive. It’s a blur.

She did it repeatedly until a firefighter took over, and the man ultimately began breathing again, was given oxygen and taken to a hospital.

Gloria then went back inside the center for the final hour of her shift.

“It was a little hard to redirect your mind to your work after something like that. Now you are worried about this person. He’s a human just like you and me,” she said. “It was so nerve-racking, but I got through the day. But my arms and hands were shaking the whole rest of the afternoon.”

Tom Walker, the center manager and Gloria’s supervisor, said her willingness to help out came as no surprise. Gloria continually puts others ahead of herself.

“I think it’s really a testament to her character and how much she cares, even at the expense of getting out of her comfort zone and going out there to do something she has never done before,” Tom said. “She tried to increase this man’s chance of survival. To which we understand he did survive. That’s pretty powerful to me.”

A quiet strength

Gloria hasn’t shared with many people what happened that Friday afternoon. She let her adult children know, but that’s about it.

“My kids said, ‘Oh my gosh, mom, that’s amazing.’ That was the extent of it,” Gloria said. “They were impressed, but they’re my kids.”

Her co-workers made a big deal about it, partially because of the person Gloria is, Tom said.

She’s the one in the office who makes sure everyone feels special on their birthdays by decorating their workspaces. She’s the one who is charged with making visitors feel welcomed when they enter the center. She’s the one who soothes patients when they are upset about insurance issues or other business concerns.

“She is really good at calming folks down and helping them understand whatever they need,” Tom said. “Usually, with the front office, it’s about a co-pay or some other financial hardship. She’s really good at de-escalating those things. She talks in a calm demeanor and has a calm manner about herself, and so she is pretty effective at those sorts of things.”

Gloria demonstrated that poise while in the vacant lot. Not only was she listening to the 911 instructions while attempting to convert them into action, but another homeless man who often stayed in the lot was loudly telling her what she should be doing, in contrast to the dispatcher. It was, at the least, a major distraction. But Gloria held her ground.

“He was somewhat trying to tell her what to do at that moment and she told him to back off. She was going off of the medical advice not this person’s advice, who was way off,” Tom said. “So she was trying to save a person’s life and telling this guy to go kick rocks. That’s what she had to handle at the same time.”

Going another extra mile

On the Monday following the incident, the man who overdosed was back in the lot, and Gloria spoke briefly with him. She didn’t get his name or a background story. He told her he spent one night in the hospital and been released. He didn’t give her much more and she didn’t press.

She asked if he had received any information on services that could help turn his life around, and he said he hadn’t. So she went back inside to the center and returned with contact information for a non-profit which helps the downtrodden with housing, food and job opportunities. Gloria didn’t just save his life. She wanted to help him make it better.

“It just shows how much she cares,” Tom said.

That was the last time Gloria or anyone at the center has seen the man. They are hoping that’s a great thing.

They want to believe it’s because he sought the help he needed after Gloria gave him another chance at living.

“I feel lucky to be able to save somebody from something horrible. That’s it,” Gloria said. “I’m just happy I was able to help somebody in some sort of way.”