Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy honored with Heartsaver Hero Award

FAIRFIELD – A Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy was recently honored for helping to save a woman’s life with CPR.

Deputy Rusty Simpson received a Heartsaver Hero Award from the American Heart Association a few weeks ago for an incident earlier this fall in which he gave cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to a woman who was unresponsive. Thanks to the timely and dedicated attention she received from Simpson and other first-responders, the woman regained a pulse and has since made a complete recovery.

Simpson said he was honored to receive this recognition from the American Heart Association, but he wants the public to know that he was not alone.

“Everybody wants to say, ‘You did a great job,’ but it’s really that we as a collective community did a great job,” Simpson said. “Fire department personnel and other deputies helped, and the medical professionals really helped. I can’t stress that enough that we all worked together.”

The incident in question occurred on Sept. 9, 2024 when the Jefferson County Law Center received a 911 call about a seemingly healthy woman who had become unresponsive and stopped breathing. Simpson and a few firefighters arrived on the scene first, and they saw that a lady was already giving CPR to the unresponsive woman.

“From what I gathered, this was completely unexpected. She was at home, and then all of a sudden she collapsed,” Simpson said, adding that he estimated this woman was in her 30s.

The first thing Simpson did when he arrived was to hook the woman up to an automated defibrillator, which can provide electrical shocks to restart the heart.

“It gives you the prompts and tells you what to do. It says whether a shock is advised or not,” Simpson said. “It makes it easy for us.”

When Simpson attached the machine to the woman, the defibrillator reported “shock advised.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and that doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “It says ‘shock advised’ and that tells you to get away from the patient, so nobody is touching them.”

The defibrillator gave the woman one shock. Then Simpson started doing chest compressions while a firefighter put a bagging mask over her mouth to fill her lungs with air. They did that for two or three minutes until the ambulance arrived. Ambulance personnel attached the woman to a LUCAS machine, which slides under a person’s back and provides chest compressions automatically.

While he was giving CPR and even after the woman was attached to the LUCAS machine, Simpson said he didn’t know if their efforts were working. She remained unresponsive during the entire process including after her arrival at the hospital.

At some point, and Simpson is not sure when, she regained a heartbeat. Simpson said he learned that the woman was able to make a full recovery.

“She has another chance at life, and that’s what’s important,” Simpson said. “That’s the importance of CPR.”

Simpson said he is faced with situations like this, with an unresponsive patient, perhaps three to five times per year. He began his career in law enforcement as a reserve deputy volunteer in 1995, and was hired by the Fairfield Police Department in 2001 before transferring to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in 2017.

Simpson said he knows of at least three people who were resuscitated by CPR, including a classmate’s father who was saved 12 years ago, someone Simpson has known for a long time.

“I still see him today, and he’s happy to be alive,” Simpson said.

CPR can seem scary to someone who’s never done it before, Simpson said, and it does often result in broken ribs.

“But broken ribs are better than passing away,” Simpson said.

Simpson said he hopes this incident will encourage members of the public to learn CPR by finding out about the next class offered on the subject, by calling Jefferson County Public Health or Jefferson County Health Center.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com