Vermont’s Alicia Carroll: Local footy’s lifesaving ‘angel’

A typical afternoon at the footy would prove anything but for Vermont trainer Alicia Carroll and North Ringwood supporter Gary Cooper, with a chance encounter bonding the pair for life.

THE siren had sounded.

The masses began to shuffle out.

For long-time North Ringwood supporter Gary Cooper – one sleep shy of his 72nd birthday – it had been another day at the footy.

The Saints had played Vermont at Terrara Rd in an Eastern league Premier Division clash the stalwart had been undecided on attending.

Little did he know the decision to make the trek down Canterbury Rd on the May afternoon would be the most crucial of his seven decades.

As a seemingly typical Saturday had wound up for Gary, it had also been business as usual for Vermont trainer, Alicia Carroll.

Running three games in a day wasn’t unusual for the medic of 11 years, just as she had done on this occasion. Club manager Lee Bidstrup says there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for the Eagles.

Vermont’s Alicia Carroll – local footy’s lifesaving trainer. Picture: Supplied

A weary Alicia retired to the rooms at the end of the senior match – until the pleas of a fellow trainer, desperate for help, pierced through the building.

The cries came on behalf of Gary – who had fallen down not far from the gate – in a turn later discovered as a cardiac arrest.

It became abundantly clear this was to be no typical Saturday for either, as Alicia remembers, rushing to the scene.

“I grabbed the medical bag and (the other trainer) grabbed a chair, because we just presumed they’d (Gary) just fallen over, and there could be blood or whatever by the time we got there,” she says.

“I got down on my knees and had a look at him, and was like ‘There’s no blood, this is completely different to what I expected’ and his breathing was a bit compromised.”

With the aid of two gentlemen, Alicia lifted Gary onto his back into the recovery position. The chair would be of no use – he was “a dead-weight”.

Slightly-built at 46kg, Alicia would begin what another trainer vouches as five or so minutes of CPR ahead of the paramedics’ arrival.

“The adrenaline is rushing, everything that you’ve read in your training with your first-aid, that you’ve learnt in class, even watching those ambulance paramedic shows, it all just comes flooding back,” Alicia recalls.

“Gary is a big man, I’m only 46 kilos, do I have enough weight in my body to do (CPR) properly?

“I was pushing with everything I had, everything.”

Patrons shuffling out of the ground had gathered at the scene – including Gary’s brother, Neil.

Questions raced a million miles a minute through Alicia’s mind as she laboured away to save a life – and emotions would race just as quickly.

It’s a quirky, well-known – and somewhat ironic – fact that CPR should be performed to the same tempo as the 1977 Bee Gees hit, ‘Stayin’ Alive’.

But singing an upbeat tune was farthest from the Eagles’ trainer’s mind.

“When I was doing the CPR, instead of singing that song you’re meant to sing, I was actually crying, calling and yelling his name and saying ‘I’m so sorry Gary, I’m so sorry, but I have to do this.’”

“Was I doing it right? Was I going deep enough?”

“You’re meant to go a third into their chest cavity to make sure that you’re doing it correctly … you do it in class and it’s on dummies and you just get that ‘click’ noise … but when you’re doing it on a real person you’re actually getting their breath and that just took me back a little bit.

“Then I realised there were all these people around watching, mates of his … one of them was his brother and he came across as I was doing the CPR, so after I found that out it was a little bit daunting.”

She continued the exhaustive marathon as the paramedics arrived setting up to take over.

“I didn’t think I had that in me, but it was the adrenaline, keep going, keep going, don’t stop, keep going,” Alicia says.

“I was exhausted – I’d just done three games of footy as well so I had been running all day, and unfortunately that situation had happened – I was absolutely exhausted.

“Thank God the ambos turned up quick.”

Quick-thinking supporters called triple-0 as Alicia got to work on saving Gary. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Amid the pandemonium, Gary’s iPhone bearing emergency contacts would be utilised – wife Di alerted in the car on bustling Hoddle St fresh from attending Collingwood’s match at the MCG.

Gary survived and was rushed to hospital where he was in an induced coma for weeks.

The North Ringwood life member’s choice to watch his beloved Saints that Saturday inadvertently meant he lived to see 72.

“He was umming and ahing whether to go to that game,” Alicia says.

“Had he not gone to that game, his wife would’ve come home and found him dead on the couch … he was right time, right place.

“He had a blockage in one artery that was 70 per cent, and 60 in the other and he didn’t even know.”

As North Ringwood president Steve Wootten reveals: “Had he have gone out the gate, it would’ve been curtains.”

“It just shows you how important first-aiders are and having them at your club … regardless of if it’s someone from our club or someone else’s club, at the end of the day we’re all playing footy.

“It was lucky he collapsed where he did, there’s no doubt about that.”

The ordeal overwhelmed Alicia in the aftermath – but she credits the immediate help of her trainers and both sets of supporters from whom she “could feel the energy, just to help this man.”

Not only had she saved a celebrated clubman but a husband, father, grandfather and brother. A debrief with her trainers followed.

“After the incident, we’ve gone back to the club and as I’ve walked past some of the North Ringwood supporters I was sort of tearing up a little bit, and they all clapped as I was walking off and I sort of broke down on my own,” Alicia says.

“Then we’ve gone out and spoken to people from our club, and a lot of people from North Ringwood as well as their trainer … then I called my kids, I called my mum, I went to the cemetery on the Sunday and I sat down and I spoke to my dad.

“But we’ve always made sure we’ve debriefed as a group … as long as we talk about it, it’s sort of an off-loading that we’re able to do, so I have processed it.”

Gary is set to undergo triple-bypass surgery on August 1 after time in rehabilitation.

Wootten says he’s on track to making a recovery, but “they had to get him back into a state of health that would allow him to be operated on” following May 7’s narrow escape.

The club had hoped to welcome him back last Saturday for North Ringwood and Vermont’s return bout to formally reunite with Alicia and to celebrate the Vermont trainer’s deed.

With surgery so close, Gary’s appearance couldn’t eventuate.

But Alicia’s presence at last Saturday’s North Ringwood function evoked raptures of applause and wells of tears, amid a room of rusted-on Sainters.

The Cooper family has kept contact with Alicia, who has often checked in on the 72-year-old’s condition.

The phone calls have been regular and Alicia and Gary last met two or so weeks ago.

“The fact they’ve discharged him from hospital is a really positive sign, I know it was really touch-and-go and I was keeping the North Ringwood community involved weekly on his progress,” Wootten says.

“I hope he does realise how lucky he is.”

A defibrillator is “The most important thing you can have”, Alicia Carroll says.

There’s certainly no question over gratitude, as a recent catch-up over coffee between the family and the lifesaving trainer would attest.

Alicia’s phone lit up on the Monday after Gary’s collapse. It was Neil.

She recalls: “Him and I were both in tears on the phone together and he was just so grateful, and I was just grateful that I was there and able to do something.”

Keeping a watchful eye forms part of Alicia’s livelihood.

She plies her trade as a traffic controller and electrical spotter – “watching excavators under powerlines, making sure they don’t get electrocuted.”

Gary’s close call hadn’t been the first time Alicia had been thrust into the lifesaving spotlight using CPR.

In fact, the third – she had done so on the side of the road on the way to work one morning before paramedics arrived.

And she had saved legendary Vermont timekeeper Col Smyth – coincidentally at a match against North Ringwood – after he had collapsed.

Late Vermont timekeeper Col Smyth had also been saved by trainer Alicia Carroll at a match against North Ringwood in recent years. Smyth passed away earlier this year.

Alicia had completed her CPR refresher training through the Eastern league in the March, a mere two months prior to Gary’s cardiac arrest.

As she puts it: “It’s a skill that’s great to have, but you never want to use it.”

The same applies for the defibrillator machine, on hand for immediate use at both matches in saving Col and Gary.

A defibrillator is a device that sends an electric pulse or shock to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat.

It’s perfectly fine if it never has to see the light of day, Alicia says, but: “It is the most important thing you can have.”

“It’s a tool that if it never has to work a day in its life, fantastic, absolutely fantastic … a first-aid tool that hopefully never has to do anything, that’s how we look at it.”

Wootten says Alicia holds a special title among North Ringwood’s history.

Perhaps an eclipsing one at a club aptly nicknamed the ‘Saints’.

“Without (Alicia), Gary wouldn’t have still been here and we would’ve lost a very highly respected member of the North Ringwood Football Club,” he says.

“She’ll go down in our history as an angel.”