A LEISURE centre employee has been hailed a hero after using his first aid training to keep a 67-year-old man alive after he went into cardiac arrest during a game of squash.

Sonya Vickers said that Simon Hawkins’ “CPR actions saved my dad’s life” after Tim Crow collapsed at Nunnery Wood Sports Centre.

Mr Hawkins, operations manager, rushed to the squash courts while his colleague called for an ambulance, managing to keep the patient alive before paramedics arrived minutes later.

“I was on shift and was alerted to a situation on the squash court, so went around and used the training we’d received and was obviously overjoyed with the result,” said Mr Hawkins, 52.

“Afterwards it felt like an episode of a TV show, it didn’t feel like it had happened to me.

“You check for general dangers to yourself initially, and try to get a response from the patient,” he explained.

“You establish whether they are breathing and if they are, you put them in the recovery position, if not you go straight into the CPR. It all happened very quickly.”

He said he trained as a first aider many years ago, but has CPR refresher courses every two years and defibrillator refreshers every three years.

Mr Hawkins, who has worked at the sports centre for 26 years, used “conventional CPR” and didn’t need to use a defibrillator, with the paramedics arriving so quickly.

“It probably had something to do with them being stationed just over the road,” he said.

Mr Crow, who has seven children, with the youngest at university, and 13 grandchildren, had a successful operation two days after he collapsed with surgeons fitting an ICD, which acts as a mini defibrillator.

An avid racquet player, he previously had a heart attack three years ago, and his heart now only functions at 30 per cent capacity.

“That’s due to the damage done to the cardiac tissue,” said daughter Mrs Vickers. “The doctors had said he needed to be really careful, and I don’t think they thought he would get back into sport, but he just loves squash.”

She said he cannot remember exactly what happened when he collapsed last Wednesday (January 24), though apparently he had just played the first game and, after a drink of water, was back on the court.

“Unlike a heart attack, where there are signs – you feel unwell – a cardiac arrest there isn’t necessarily any warning,” said Mrs Vickers.

She said ambulance staff later said he did not have a pulse for four minutes, with paramedics arriving about six minutes after the call, meaning Mr Hawkins’ efforts were crucial.

Mrs Vickers wants to “make people aware that having CPR training and knowing what to do in that situation could save someone’s life”.

Mr Hawkins said he had never performed CPR on a person before “only dummies” – and agreed “you never know when you might need it [first aid training]. It shows why it’s so important”.

Mrs Vickers said her mum Joanna Crow has banned her husband from playing squash again, with experts recommending that people should stop before they reach 60.

At the time of his cardiac arrest, Mrs Vickers said her dad had played three games in five days, and had planned another for two days later.

“He was running around like a lunatic,” she said, adding: “He has always been a massive squash fan, playing people much younger than him.”

When Mr Crow, who helped set up The River School, Worcester, in 1985, had recovered, his daughter said he was “more concerned if he had been winning than what had happened to him”.

Mr Crow and his family paid Mr Hawkins a visit at the leisure centre on Friday (February 2) to thank him in person.