Hospital workers save new grandfather after collapse

NORTH LOGAN — He collapsed suddenly, and he had no pulse.

Emergency workers said 53-year-old Toby Alt probably would have died had it not been for the fact that he was at a hospital.

Instead, Alt was alive and recovering Sunday, and family members attributed his survival to the serendipitous timing of his granddaughter's birth — which placed him just seconds from medical help—and the swift action of the medical team at Cache Valley Hospital.

"This team here is incredible, incredible," wife Valerie Alt said during an interview with KSL-TV. "I just couldn't say anything but good words because they're truly genuine people. They really cared. They took care of him and all of us."

The Alts were visiting their daughter, Aintzane Simpkins, and their first grandchild, Gia, on Thursday, when Toby Alt collapsed.

"My dad was just sitting over there on the couch, and he decided to get up and walk around," Simpkins said. "He started getting severe heartburn, so he turned around and was trying to get back to the couch."

Simpkins said that's when her dad started stumbling.

"He just collapsed," Valerie Alt said. "It was pretty much a nightmare."

It didn't look good to anybody.

"The minute I saw his eyes, I said, 'Uh oh, something's wrong,'" said Corbin Alt, Aintzane's twin brother.

Family members ran out into the hall to yell for help, and soon they said a small army of workers was attending to Toby Alt.

"We found a gentleman on the floor passed out," said Cache Valley Hospital emergency room registered nurse Derek McLeod. "Family had thought that maybe he had a seizure, but on our quick exam, we quickly found out he had no pulse."

McLeod said the medical team performed CPR and shocked Toby Alt's body four times with a defibrillator, which brought him back to life.

"Swarms of people came in," said Alisa Pirtle, Valerie Alt's sister. "They were little worker bees. I have to say I was counting, and there were 17 at one time. We had everything from the nurses to the physicians to the little gal in the back — she was taking notes. We had the pharmacy department here and everybody. It was clockwork. It looked like something they had practiced multiple times."

The registered nurse said he didn't believe Toby Alt would have survived if he had collapsed elsewhere.

"He wouldn't have made it," McLeod said. "The thing that saved him was the defibrillator within minutes of him going down."

McLeod and family members said Toby Alt was subsequently flown to Ogden Regional Medical Center, where he received a pacemaker the next day.

"He had a 20% ejection fraction, which means that his heart was only pumping and performing at about 20%," McLeod said, citing what family members had disclosed to him.

Valerie Alt said Sunday her husband still has a long road to recovery, but he was improving.

She attributed the timing of their granddaughter's birth to Toby Alt surviving the ordeal.

"It's a miracle," she said. "That baby kept my husband and their dad alive. He's here with us today because she was born."

Simpkins said she had originally planned to be induced in a couple of weeks.

"My husband actually made me come in," Simpkins explained. "I was contracting and I didn't realize I was contracting because my back was hurting so bad, all the way down my leg, and it turns out I had kidney stones, so I wasn't even supposed to have her that early."

Simpkins said her baby was breech, and doctors decided to perform a C-section on Wednesday.

"It's like (Gia) knew she needed to get out and we needed grandpa here at the hospital," Simpkins said.

Valerie Alt said she was grateful the ordeal ended the way it did.

"It was a double blessing," Alt said. "We got our little Gia, and we get their dad and my husband here for a long time now, so we're very grateful."

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