Kennewick educators and police, Hanford worker earn lifesaving awards

Ty Cronenwett was returning to Legacy High School after grabbing lunch from a taco truck in late August 2014 when he was stopped by a woman waving her hands in the parking lot of a neighboring school building.

“She came up to my truck and asked what I could do,” said Cronenwett, a history teacher and coach. He was told another district employee was unresponsive and gasping for breath.

“Things escalated very quickly,” Cronenwett said.

Cronenwett and Michelle Larrabee, dean of students for Eastgate Elementary School, recently received the Governor’s Lifesaving Award, along with three Kennewick police officers — Joe Jackson, Holly Baynes and Rebecca Jones — for efforts that led to saving the unidentified woman’s life.

They were among 32 people around the state who received the award, including Thomas R. Banta, a Teamster working for Washington Closure Hanford. His quick recognition of the symptoms of a stroke allowed a fellow Teamster to get treatment quickly enough to prevent long-term physical disabilities or death.

Teachers and other school staff were preparing for the start of the school year on Aug. 22, 2014. Eastgate was housed in the Fruitland building that year, which is a campus shared with Legacy and Kennewick high schools and alternative education program Mid-Columbia Partnership.

A group of district employees had returned from a lunch but one of them suddenly became ill and was unable to get out of the van they were riding in. The people with her called 911 but also sought help for her.

Cronenwett parked his car and went over to see what he could do. A 911 dispatcher was on the phone and when he spoke with her, she asked if anyone knew CPR. He said he did; in fact, he’d just renewed his CPR certification for the upcoming football season.

“It was all very fresh,” he said.

After someone helped him move the woman out of the car, he did a couple of rounds of chest compressions and breaths before police showed up. That’s where Larrabee came in.

She’d also come outside to see what she could do to help. She and other staff had only been in the building a couple weeks and she happened to notice the AED, or automated external defibrillator. When the police asked for the device, she said she knew where it was and another staff member fetched it. Police reportedly shocked the woman’s heart two or three times before she was loaded into an ambulance and taken to Trios Health.

“It was a very terrifying thing,” Larrabee said.

Baynes, now a Kennewick police detective, said she also did some chest compressions after arriving, with Jackson eventually using the AED. It wasn’t the first time Baynes had to use CPR on the job, she said, but it was the first time she’d been at an incident where an AED was used.

The woman, who had reportedly had a heart attack, stabilized and ended up recovering. Her friends visited Cronenwett afterward to give him an update and thank him. But the incident was jarring, with Cronenwett taking up his principal’s offer to take the day off after he was unable to focus the rest of the day.

“I’m happy to have helped but I’d be totally fine if I never have to do (CPR) again,” Cronenwett said.

Neither he nor Larrabee attended the awards ceremony at the Governor’s Industrial Safety and Health Conference in Tacoma. Banta did attend the conference, as did Baynes and Jones. Baynes said she heard some impressive stories about others around the state and it was nice to be thanked but that isn’t why she and everyone else did what they did.

“We all just did our jobs,” Baynes said. “We’re not doing it for any recognition.”

Banta was backing up a dump truck May 28 in the 300 Area of Hanford just north of Richland, when he made eye contact with his spotter, as he was trained to do. He thought his spotter, another Teamster, was acting oddly.

He stopped his dump truck and got out, observing that his coworker was unsteady on his feet and having trouble speaking coherently, according to a nomination for the lifesaving award prepared by Lowell Townley of Washington Closure.

Banta’s first step was to get his coworker into the worker’s company pickup and out of the river cobble, sand and dirt of the area. Banta feared he would fall on the uneven ground.

In the pickup Banta could see that one side of his coworker’s face was sagging and that his left arm and leg appeared to be weak.

Because of first aid training, he recognized those as signs of a possible stroke and alerted the management team to call an ambulance. The Hanford Fire Department responded immediately.

Banta’s coworker was taken to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland quickly enough that he could receive medications that prevented brain damage.

“Time lost is brain lost,” according to the American Stroke Association. Quick treatment can reduce disability or even save a life.

That Banta took the time to observe his coworker’s movements and then found out what the problem was gave the coworker the edge in surviving the stroke as well as he did, Townley said.

“WCH teaches its employees that we all are our brother’s/sister’s keeper,” Townley said. “Tom Banta upheld that belief all the way.”

This story was originally published October 14, 2015 at 9:42 PM with the headline "Kennewick educators and police, Hanford worker earn lifesaving awards."