LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Iroquois High School staff banded together to help the girls basketball coach, Robert Taylor, when he suffered a heart attack while at school.
It happened on the second floor of the school last Monday. Video captured on the school's surveillance cameras show Taylor motionless on the floor and several staff members around him.
"We didn't find the pulse," said Dealdon Watson, a teacher at Iroquois. "He wasn't breathing."
Watson jumped into action, starting chest compressions and CPR. He is wearing the orange shirt in the video.
"My emotions were through the roof, but thankfully we had enough training and enough people around me to to do what needed to be done in the situation," Watson said.
At the same time, other staff called 911 and teacher Perry Finley went to grab an AED, automated external defibrillator, that was recently installed at the school last December.
"I walked by it every morning," Finley said. "I see it every day. So I think that had a lot to do with me knowing where it was and that we needed it."
Together, staff members followed the defibrillator's instructions and released one shock on Taylor before EMS arrived.
"I just want to tell them thank you for giving my daughters another chance for their dad and me to be able to see my grandkids one more time," Taylor said Thursday.
EMS shocked his heart three more times, and Taylor remembers waking up two days later in the hospital. He said despite his near death experience, he can't help but think of the students that might have seen what happened.
"It's never what I want any student to have to witness," he said. "I've never been on my back, but I'm glad that I fell with a work family that really cares."
All JCPS staff got training on how to use the newly installed AEDs, a life-saving tool that the Iroquois teachers didn't expect to have to use so soon.
"It's amazing that they joined together to save mine," Taylor said.
School is about to be out for the summer, so Taylor said he's going to take this time off to thoughtfully consider whether or not he wants to come back this fall.
"My kids have always shared me with other people's kids and they've never raised an eye, batted an eye about it," he said. "I'm going to focus on my own kids for a little while."
Since December, all JCPS high schools have five AEDs and each middle school has three.
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