Logan Screeners Spring to Revive Heart Attack Victim

They are the stern face of the front line against terrorism, known for bellowing out terse commands to passengers, ordering them to take off their shoes, show their boarding passes, and put their bags through the X-ray machines.

But some officers of the Transportation Security Administration can also revive passengers in the throes of a heart attack.

That is what happened yesterday when Rob Lomanno and Dave Lynch, two TSA security screeners at Logan International Airport in Boston, grabbed a defibrillator and applied it to an 86-year-old man who had stopped breathing outside the Dunkin' Donuts shop in Terminal B. With their adrenaline pumping, they summoned their medical training and brought back his pulse.

Lynch and Lomanno were being hailed as heroes yesterday.

"It's a nice feeling to help someone," Lomanno said.

The call to duty "Rob! Call an ambulance!" came at 11 a.m. yesterday, shouted by a fellow officer outside the US Airways checkpoint. Lomanno quickly radioed for help, and Lynch raced for one of the 74 defibrillators Massport installed at Logan two years ago. Then they hurried to Dunkin' Donuts, where they saw a man slumped in his wheelchair.

Lomanno, a burly former truck driver, and Lynch, a retired Swampscott fire captain accustomed to the pulse-pounding vertigo of an emergency, hoisted the man from his chair and laid him on the ground. Then they applied the defibrillator's electric current in an effort to jolt his heart back to its normal rhythm.

"We hit him three times, did what we could," said Lomanno, a former paramedic who has been with the TSA for three years. "We did some compressions, and at that point Massport Fire/Rescue and EMTs showed up, and we just roped things off. We saw him start to breathe, and they took him to the hospital from there."

The man, whose name was not released, was in intensive care at Massachusetts General Hospital yesterday afternoon, said Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman.

Phil Orlandella, a Logan spokes man, said it was only the fifth time defibrillators had been used at Logan since they were installed. TSA officers are not required to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but many know the technique from previous careers in emergency services, Davis said.

Yesterday, Lomanno and Lynch recalled how they tried to stay calm and call upon their training.

"It wasn't planned; we just kind of worked in synch," said Lomanno. "Your emotions are just kind of going, and you're in the moment of the adrenaline rush. Just to hear them say he had a pulse makes you feel good."

It was a rare departure from their normal routine: patting down passengers, sweeping them with metal-detecting wands, and reminding them to take out their laptops and place them on the conveyor belt, separate from other belongings.

"The two reasons why we're here at TSA is for security and customer service," Lomanno said, "and hopefully today showed some customer service."

Lynch said he had not used a defibrillator since he retired four years ago after 32 years as a firefighter in Swampscott. "It's just like riding a bike," he said. The technique came right back.

"Today," Lynch said, "everything went well."

Michael Levenson can be reached at [email protected].

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