Aleppo Shriners Medical Corps Saves Bystander During Holiday Parade

The Labor Day parade in downtown Marlborough, Massachusetts, had all the usual sights and sounds. Adults and children cheering merrily. Decorated vehicles honking and driving down the parade route. Phones snapping pictures. Participants tossing beads.

However, as the parade progressed, Patrick Ventola, head of the Aleppo Shriners Medical Corps, heard something else: a call on his radio. He had been driving forward along the parade in a golf cart while the Aleppo Shriners marched, per their tradition. As trained first responders, his corps was there to provide medical support to their fellow nobles if and when needed. “Our goal is just to keep everybody moving forward,” he said. “We support the guys bringing in the money to help the kids.”

But the radio call alerted him to another person in need of help: a bystander who had collapsed back down the parade route. Ventola, who comes from an EMS and construction background, immediately turned his golf cart around, drove against the flow of traffic and soon found the collapsed man on the lawn in front of a house on the parade route. Fellow corps members Jeff Myung and Ken Murnane Jr. joined him in attending to the patient.

The trio found the man unconscious in a lawn chair and moved him to the ground to assess his condition. “We took vital signs, checked the guy’s pupils for responsiveness, and, in an overdose, people usually have very pinpoint pupils about the size of a pen tip. It’s a very good indication,” Ventola said.

The team determined that the man had overdosed and administered Narcan (naloxone), a medication that rapidly reverses the effects of opioids. “Narcan actually worked. It brought him back to, basically, a semi-conscious state,” Ventola said. They felt the man’s pulse return and then provided oxygen to stabilize his breathing.

At that point, paramedics from the Marlborough Fire Department arrived on the scene. “The fire department was a little delayed getting to us because of the parade,” he said. “If we hadn’t been there, I highly doubt that person would be alive. It was good timing. He was still breathing but unresponsive. If we hadn’t recognized the overdose, we’d have been doing CPR instead.”

The corps remained by the patient’s side to assist and monitor until an ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital. The entire incident lasted about 10 to 15 minutes, according to Ventola.

Speaking on behalf of the trio, he was quick to credit his team. “It was a team effort. There were three of us,” he said. “Jeff and Ken worked just as hard as I did. It’s not about me.”

While Ventola loves what he does as a member of the corps, he notes that slow days are usually the best for everyone involved. “Our unit’s very tight knit. There aren’t many people who do what we do,” he said. “On a good day, everybody else goes to work. On our good day, we show up and do absolutely nothing, and that’s a good day for us. Because, if we’re doing something, that means someone else is having a bad day.”

He added that the Aleppo Shriners Medical Corps just did what they believe in at the parade: “We see what we can do for others. It’s all about helping people. A person’s a person, in my opinion.”