By Richard Kaufman
Sentinel Reporter
It was a day Walter Hughes and his daughter, Kristina, won’t soon forget.
Late last month, Greenwich Emergency Medical Services (GEMS) was dispatched to a call at a local Greenwich country club where a man was having chest pains.
Officer Ryan Carino of the Greenwich Police Department responded first, and was talking with the man when he went into cardiac arrest and lost consciousness. Carino began to perform CPR as Kristina, a GEMS EMT, and her Paramedic colleague, Greg Saracino, pulled up to the scene.
As is standard operating procedure for GEMS, another ambulance was dispatched to provide support. In that ambulance was Kristina’s father, Walter, a 33-year veteran at GEMS, along with EMT Samanthia Zezima.
Walter and Kristina had worked with each other a handful of times before, but it was rare since they had opposite shifts. This was the first cardiac arrest call they had been on together.
“[The patient] definitely didn’t have a pulse, he definitely wasn’t breathing, but he was in a rhythm that was shockable,” said Kristina, who was preparing to administer basic airway resuscitation. “We defibrillated him with one shock and he came right back.”
Kristina looked up at her father in amazement.
“Any time you have a call like that where you revive someone and they’re waking up and beginning to talk to you, that one will stick with you for a long time,” Walter said, adding that it was extra special to save a life alongside his daughter.
This was the second time in two months that Officer Carino served as an essential link in a patient’s survival. Kristina said the collaboration between police and EMS in Greenwich is unmatched.
“I have multiple EMS jobs. The only place where I see such a seamless, intuitive family-like environment between PD and EMS is in Greenwich,” Kristina said.
Oftentimes, results from cardiac arrest events aren’t great.
“We don’t get to see that a lot. To get to see that is awesome, and to be on that with my dad was even better. We see a lot of sad things, and especially this year [with COVID-19], to have a positive call and have my dad there was just really cool,” Kristina said.
Kristina stayed in the back of the ambulance with the man on the way to the hospital. He said he couldn’t remember what happened.
“I said, ‘Honey, it’s okay that you don’t remember, because honestly, the alternative is much worse,'” Kristina said. The man agreed.
This was the first of three cardiac arrest calls Kristina responded to that night. The other two didn’t have positive outcomes. The one bright spot made the night easier to deal with.
“That guy gets to go home and kiss his wife goodnight, and the other people I dealt with with that night don’t get to do that,” Kristina said.
The patient continues to do well, according to an update from the GPD. Both he and his wife recently came down to the Public Safety Complex to thank all involved in his successful recovery.
Growing up in Golden’s Bridge, N.Y. in Westchester County, Kristina joined the volunteer fire department when she was 16, but swore she’d never enter the medical field.
Public service runs in the family, as Walter’s father was a volunteer firefighter, and his mother was a fire dispatcher. However, Kristina wanted to own a beauty salon, so she went to cosmetology school and later studied business, but realized it wasn’t what she ultimately wanted to do for a living.
Kristina went to work as a receptionist at an animal hospital, which sparked her interest in emergency medicine. After becoming an emergency vet tech, she took a leave of absence and decided to take her EMT test. As soon as she stepped foot on an ambulance, Kristina was hooked.
The EMS field has definitely brought the Hughes family closer together.
“[My dad] has said he’s proud of me. He doesn’t need to say it. He just radiates it. It makes me teary eyed. It brings a lot of emotion out to me. I never felt a lot of pride from my parents growing up, which wasn’t on them — I always felt like I never really knew what I wanted to do, and I kept changing my mind and my direction a lot,” Kristina said. “Now that I’ve found my niche, I just feel so much pride radiating from him, and my mom, too. But because it’s what he does, I feel it more from him.”
Kristina has been with GEMS now for two years, and has other EMS jobs in New York. She is now in Paramedic School in New Britain, Conn., following in her father’s footsteps.
“Dad’s really proud of her,” Walter said.
