Petaluma bystanders aid referee suffering mid-game cardiac arrest

Craig Backman was refereeing his fourth lacrosse game of the day Saturday in Petaluma when he suddenly collapsed on the field in front of players and spectators.

The 69-year-old Martinez resident was having a heart attack. The next day, from a hospital bed, he credited the rapid response of bystanders, the skilled determination of firefighter-paramedics and four jolts from a defibrillator for saving his life.

A retired carpenter and a lacrosse referee for 43 years, Backman expects to spend Thanksgiving at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. And he’s grateful to be there.

“I’m going to have something to be thankful for the rest of my life,” he said Sunday evening by telephone from his hospital bed.

When he gets stronger, he said he wants to personally thank all those who had a hand in keeping him alive after he collapsed on the grass at Petaluma’s Lucchesi Park.

Backman was one of about a dozen referees for a youth lacrosse tournament that was taking place in at least two locations Saturday in Petaluma.

He remembers little of his collapse, which happened at about 3:45 p.m. near a goal circle.

“I guess I just went down hard,” he said. “My heart just stopped.”

After Backman collapsed, officials, coaches and parents sprang into action. They quickly found the referee wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

Travis Hopper, an assistant coach for a team from Reno, said a parent of one of his players, an anesthesiologist named Dan Sorensen, quickly took charge of the situation while others called 911.

“He immediately started CPR,” Hopper said of Sorensen. “He told me to grab (Backman’s) head and pull on his jawbone to open up the airway. It was pretty intense.”

Sorensen, urged to take a break by others around him, told a coach from Sacramento to take over and administer hands-only CPR, according to Hopper.

At that point, Backman “took a gasp and it was unbelievable,” Hopper said.

But he did not start regular breathing again.

Sorensen then told a trainer to get the park’s automated external defibrillator and directed him on how to use it, Hopper said. Backman then received his first jolt.

The referee later said he has been told that a second physician also was on hand to assist. They told him that he received CPR for about seven minutes until Petaluma firefighters arrived.

“When we got there, he was sort of conscious and breathing,” Fire Capt. Dan Farren said of Backman. “But in the few seconds it took for us to get our equipment next to him, he deteriorated again.”

The paramedics took over life-saving efforts, again relying on a defibrillator twice to revive him.

The bystanders, said Farren, “had a profound impact” on helping keep Backman alive.

Paramedics loaded Backman into an ambulance and rushed him to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Farren said.

Although Petaluma Valley Hospital is next to the park, Memorial is the region’s trauma center and is more equipped to treat cardiac emergencies, Farren said.

In the ambulance, paramedics used the defibrillator a fourth time.“That’s the one I felt,” Backman said.

His physician at Memorial told him he apparently suffered a blockage in a main artery. His revival was hampered by an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. As a result, Backman said he is slated in the next day or so to have a small defibrillator implanted in him to treat the arrhythmia.

His three daughters likely will insist that his days as a referee are over, he said. Even so, he hopes to contribute in other ways to lacrosse, a sport he learned at San Francisco City College and later went on to play for UC Berkeley.

He and his daughters want those involved to know the difference they made, Backman said.

“My family cannot thank them enough,” he said.

A former Army medic, Backman noted that his case must have seemed dire to all those who came to his aid. But they kept attending to him, he said, “and it worked.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit. You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.