20-Year-Old CPR Lesson Helps Toms River Butcher Save Friend

TOMS RIVER, NJ — If you've ever thought about taking a course in CPR but had never done so, you might want to do it after reading this article. Because even a rudimentary knowledge of it could mean the difference between life and death.

It did for for a Point Pleasant man last week. The man is alive because butcher Adam Arms recalled the CPR course he'd taken 20 years ago and never gave up on his friend.

Arms, who is a butcher and is the owner of Lenny's Markets in Silverton and Point Pleasant, was at the Silverton shop last week filling Thanksgiving orders when his longtime friend stopped in to pick up his Thanksgiving turkey.

"We talked for a few minutes and then he headed out the door," Arms said Tuesday when reached at the shop. A few minutes later Arms went outside to carry a turkey to the car for one of his customers and saw his friend on the ground between two trucks. (Patch is withholding the man's name to protect his privacy; a family member who answered his phone number said he did not wish to be interviewed for this article.)

"I hollered at him, joking that he better not be doing anything to my truck," Arms said, but he quickly realized something was very wrong. "His face was purple. He was just lying there."

"I knew it wasn't a seizure; my sister had those," Arms said. He had once planned to become a police officer, and his studies included a course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. But the course had been 20 years ago, he said.

"They're always updating stuff and changing things," he said. "It used to be that you gave (rescue) breaths, but apparently you don't do that anymore."

Arms drew on what he remembered, however: "I pulled off my apron and put it under his head, and I started doing chest compressions." Gage Bongiovi, who works for Arms as a butcher, "came running out to help," and as Arms and Bongiovi continued to work on Arms' friend, clearing his airway so he could breathe and continuing to do chest compressions, a female customer called 911.

"It felt like it was forever," Arms said, adding that he slapped his friend in the face a few times to try to bring him back to consciousness. "He looked at me one time, and tried to say my name," Arms said. Then Toms River EMS personnel arrived and took over, rushing the man to the hospital. Toms River police confirmed receiving a call about a heart attack but could not provide details of the incident.

Arms said when his friend's wife called him a few hours later to tell him the man had survived, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

"It shakes you up," Arms said. "For the rest of the day I couldn't focus." Bongiovi had to take a break and sit outside for a bit because he was so rattled, Arms said.

"The last few years I've been losing everyone from my life," Arms said, noting that both of his parents, his brother, two uncles and his pet bulldog had died during that time. His father, Lenny Arms, was the former mayor of Point Pleasant Borough, and his mother, Mary, was well-known throughout the area, a family friend who tipped off Patch about the rescue said. His brother, Darren, had died in 2013, according to a Patch report.

"Here's this guy I've known for 25 years and I was just talking to him not 10 minutes before," Arms said. "It was awful. It's just lucky I was carrying that old lady's package outside."

"You just realize how short life is," said Arms, who has a 10-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter who are students in the Toms River school system. "Your life can be taken from you in seconds."

His friend, however, was able to be home with his family for Thanksgiving. The turkey the man had bought was kept in the store and picked up later, Arms said.

Arms insists he's not a hero.

"You don't know what you'll do (in a situation like that) until it actually happens," Arms said. But he was certain of one thing.

"I'm going to take another (CPR) class," he said, as he sorted through the emotions of that day. "That's the kind of stuff you should know."

Gage Bongiovi (left) and Adam Arms, owner of Lenny's Markets. Photo provided by Adam Arms