Kind hearts save a life

NEWPORT COAST ? Lou Basenese turns 57 today, so the gift neighbors gave him on July 6 was a little early. Their gift wasn’t wrapped ? it was his life.

Basenese and his wife, Laura, were vacationing here from Orlando when Lou suffered a heart attack near their condo. Laura’s screams for help led neighbors to call 911 and help her perform CPR until paramedics came.

Updated CPR procedures done by the medics and a brand-new machine at Hoag Hospital also allowed Lou Basenese to survive what could have been a fatal attack.

It was an incredible confluence of circumstances that kept Basenese alive.

Basenese now heads energy company Demeter Systems in Florida, but he and his wife previously lived in Newport about a decade ago. The couple began staying in the Trovare subdivision on June 26 but hadn’t met many of the other tenants.

On July 6, Laura was supposed to work out with a friend, Newport Beach resident Eila Ulyett, who canceled because her niece was visiting.

So instead, Laura and Lou took an evening walk down Newport Coast Drive.

“We came back up the hill and we were just around the corner of the driveway,” Laura Basenese said in an interview at her condo Tuesday. “He was right in the middle of a word and fell backward with a seizure.”

She started to scream, then realized people needed to know what the problem was. So she shouted for someone to call 911 because her husband was having a heart attack.

“Someone” turned out to be Peter Algazi, an executive recruiter who also lives in the Trovare neighborhood. He called for paramedics as other neighbors came to Laura’s aid.

Geoff Dunlevie was watching TV with his daughter and got up for a glass of milk when he heard the cries for help. He knew CPR ? though his last training was 18 years ago ? so he ran out to offer help. Another neighbor, Megan Bright, had been performing CPR but wasn’t strong enough to compress Basenese’s chest. Dunlevie took over.

“You were so cold,” Dunlevie told Lou Basenese when they met for the first time Tuesday. “I thought you were dead, so I told my daughter, why don’t you go back inside.”

Dunlevie has never had to perform CPR in a life-threatening situation, he said.

“At that point I thought to myself, I’m either going to be a bystander or I’m going to help,” he said. “I started trying to find a pulse ? and I thought, I don’t want this guy to die.”

He didn’t ? though Lou Basenese was clinically dead for a moment.

“He did not have a pulse and he was not breathing on his own,” said Newport Beach Fire Capt. Ty Lunde, who also is a paramedic and helped treat Basenese that day.

So medics used updated procedures that dictate giving CPR to get more oxygen into the patient’s body before delivering an electric shock to the heart, rather than administering the shock right away. Lunde said he’d never used the new procedures on a patient before Basenese.

The teamwork continued once Basenese got to Hoag Hospital, where an eight-person cardiology team was assembled in 20 minutes. He also became the first patient to use a new machine that lowers body temperature to prevent swelling and other damage to the brain that can occur after it’s been deprived of blood.

“He had many, many things in his favor that allowed him to survive,” said Dr. Aidan Raney, who performed bypass surgery on Basenese. “At anywhere along the line he could have had a catastrophic outcome.”

While Laura waited for Lou to recover at Hoag Hospital, another neighbor, Candi Urner, filled their refrigerator to feed the guests the couple was expecting, and Ulyett cared for their dog.

After leaving the hospital last week, Lou Basenese is back in Newport Coast, where the couple intends to stay for another year because they liked the medical care they got at Hoag.

Lou appears healthy and seems to have no brain damage, and he said he feels great. But he doesn’t recall the heart attack.

“I don’t remember anything about that whole day,” he said.

It’s emotional for him to listen to his neighbors ? now friends ? talk about what happened, he said.

“I’m just blown away by the unification, what they did, how they jumped in,” he said. “These are total strangers that didn’t have to help but did.”

Laura Basenese said the couple will be bicoastal for awhile, because Lou will need to return to his Orlando business. But they may someday have a home in Newport again. She’s glad that if the heart attack had to occur, that it was here.

“It could have happened anywhere. It could have been walking the dog; he could have been alone. Thank goodness he wasn’t,” Laura Basenese said. “He was in a neighborhood that cared.”dpt.26-rescue-CPhotoInfo0H1T9UOE20060726j2zfqpncCredit: DON LEACH / DAILY PILOT Caption: (LA)Peter Algazi, left, and Geoff Dunlevie, right, helped save the life of Lou Basenese after he suffered a heart attack in Newport Coast.