NORFOLK, Va. — Monday morning, a Virginia State Trooper and 7-Eleven employee from Norfolk worked together to give CPR to a man who was found unresponsive in the store's parking lot.
The two were able to save his life.
Trooper Devin Hacker pulled into the convenience store on Tidewater Drive around 6:18 a.m.
There was a man lying in front of the store who wasn't breathing and didn't have a pulse. Hacker called for EMS to come help, grabbed his medical bag and started performing CPR.
"It felt like forever, but when I reviewed the video I was on him in a second," Hacker continued, "I heard him make a few gasps like the air leaving his lungs, that let me know he still had some life in him."
Any amount of life is enough for Hacker -- this is the third incident where he's preserved a life. After about five minutes of CPR on his own, help arrived, but not yet in the form of EMT.
An employee came outside to help. Initially, Hacker told her to stay back, but after learning she knew CPR, he invited her to join in the life-saving effort. The employee gave the unresponsive man chest compressions while the trooper used a CPR mask to try to get air into his lungs.
Finally, a breakthrough, Hacker began to notice the man's eyelids moving.
"Noticed his eyelids start to open up a bit, at that point felt his pulse. It's indescribable how much relief I felt when I felt his pulse coming back to me," said Hacker of the moment he came back to life.
It took nine minutes of CPR and a dose of NARCAN (an overdose reversal medication) before the man started breathing on his own again.
From there, EMS was able to transport the man to a hospital. Hacker went back to work, finished his shift with some paperwork and made a few routine police calls.
It's unclear how long the person was lying outside without a pulse, but the VSP said security cameras show him there for at least eight minutes before Hacker drove up and found him.