Life savers

Theran Welsh (left), the associate board president of the Associated General Contractors of Wisconsin, and Bo Ryan (right), University of Wisconsin-Madison men’s basketball coach, present the AGC’s HERO Award to Kelly Niles (second from left) and Ken Schmidt for saving the life of a co-worker. Photo courtesy of the AGC of Wisconsin

Heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, Ken Schmidt races along the Fox River, his mind focused on the call he’s just received: A co-worker has collapsed and needs urgent medical attention.

He’s the supervisor on Oshkosh-based C.R. Meyer & Sons river-lock project, and what he finds when he arrives at Lock 1, an eighth of a mile from his own work site on Lock 2, is terrifying.

“When I got there, Carter was as blue as a pair of blue jeans,” he said.

He is told that crane operator Carter Timm fell to the ground as he turned to walk away from a Dumpster. That was two or three minutes ago. Precious minutes have already passed.

Schmidt checks Timm over and begins breathing for his co-worker, delivering powerful compressions to his heart. Years of CPR certification classes, knowledge he never really expected to use, come flooding back to him at an almost unconscious level.

Just yards away, C.R. Meyer employee Kelly Niles is working a different project, but he gets word of the emergency and jumps to action.

“When I ran up there, Carter’s head was bluish-purple,” he said. “I didn’t even recognize him. I asked Ken, ‘Who is this?’ When he said, ‘Carter Timm,’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Niles and Schmidt work together to keep CPR going until, finally, paramedics arrive. It’s only been a matter of minutes, but Niles remembers what his wife, a nurse, told him: A person can’t live without oxygen for more than seven minutes.

“By the time [the paramedics] got there, he had some color,” Schmidt said. “But we never got him to breathe. I still thought I was handing off a dead person.”

That was November 2006. Today, Timm is recovered from a heart bypass surgery and flooded with gratitude for the men the emergency room doctors say saved his life.

“That day, to me, I was one lucky guy to have those guys around,” Timm said. “They kept me going until help arrived. They saved my life.”
— Jennifer Pfaff

DVD promotes masons

Photo courtesy of Pernsteiner Creative Group Inc.

As the “Cube Cam” peers into the office, the message is clear: Being surrounded by drab, gray cubicle walls lit by the glow of a computer screen can make for a dull eight-hour day.

The “Cube Cam” is only a dramatization, but the Brick Distributors of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Masonry Association and three state technical colleges hope the reality behind the tongue-in-cheek ploy makes an impression on high school students considering career options.

“With modern technology and the computer world, the push toward those occupations, the building trades just aren’t as exciting as we used to be,” said Dan Kelly of the Brick Distributors and a vice president at Janesville Brick and Tile Co.

The fictitious Web feed is just one method used to dissuade that perception in the “A Career in Masonry” DVD, which recently was released statewide to high schools to recruit young blood.

In just one year at Indianhead, Waukesha County or Southwest Wisconsin technical colleges, students can gain the skills to succeed in the trade, the DVD points out.

— Jennifer Pfaff