Just how effective are CPR techniques?

A customer shopping at the Manteca Costco is alive today to tell you that it is effective, very effective.

Bill Caldera of Manteca District Ambulance tells of a recent 9-1-1 call of someone who was apparently suffering a heart attack at the big box retailer on Daniels Street who had stopped breathing.

By the time Manteca firefighters and ambulance paramedics arrived, the customers was alert and breathing.

That’s thanks to a chain wide Costco policy that teaches employees CPR and how to use defibrillators that the store the retailer has purchased for every store.

It might be time for community leaders to revisit a Manteca initiative from the 1990s that was led by Chris Haas who later became Manteca’s fire chief and Diane Myrgrand who served as the CEO for the former St. Dominic’s Hospital that is now a Kaiser Permanente hospital. They established a Save a Heart effort that attempted to replicate mass CPR training that had taken place in Seattle as well as Roseville near Sacramento. They never matched the numbers of those two cities with the peak year being able to get 400 people certified during Saturday session with various start times.

Perhaps the fire department hooking up with the Manteca District Ambulance could spread the word about hands only CPR in such an all day session with hourly classes starting every hour on the hour at no charge. They might even find a business such as Costco that understands the importance of CPR to help with the costs.