By Goya Dmytryshchak
An Altona North man was “30 seconds from death” when a fortunate set of circumstances saved him after he collapsed from a heart attack at Bunnings.
A grateful Bill Brown last week returned to the store to thank the workers who saved his life, but he has one regret – that his beloved Collingwood Football Club jacket had to be cut from his body by paramedics.
Mr Brown, 86, went to the Altona North Bunnings last month to buy wall brackets and was leaving the store with his beloved dog, Sally, when he felt faint.
“I thought, I’m gonna fall down, but don’t fall down yet, the car’s only another 10 yards away,” he said.
“And all of a sudden I fell down.”
He handed his phone to Carolina Cornejo, from Officeworks, who was on her way to get a coffee at the Altona North retail hub.
“I pushed the button to Julie [his daughter] and that’s the last thing I remember,” Mr Brown said. “And the next thing I remember after that was seeing Julie in the crowd.
“Somebody said, ‘What day is it?’ I said to them, ‘Wednesday, and I have to go to work’.
“They said to me when I got to the hospital, ‘Thirty seconds more and you’d be dead’, because they put the jumpers on me and saved my life.”
Bunnings worker Christine Dennis said she had been told a gentleman out the front had fallen.
“I did notice his hand was cold and a bit blue and I asked him if he had diabetes or a heart condition,” she said.
“I then said to one of the team members to get the defib because I knew it was his heart.”
She used the defibrillator on Mr Brown while her colleague, Scott Briggs, did compressions until Mr Brown came to.
“If it wasn’t for us having a defib … I think it’s just important for every business to have one because it might have been a different story if we didn’t have that,” Ms Dennis said.
Mr Brown said the only pinch of sadness he had was that the beloved Collingwood jacket he received for his 70th birthday had to be cut off to save his life.
“I’ve followed Collingwood since I was four – my dad used to take me and stand me on a box to watch Collingwood play,” he said.
“Collingwood to me is a very special thing, I love them to pieces.”
In fact, he loves the Pies so much he plans to have the names of the best Collingwood players read out at his funeral.
Mr Brown said he would be forever grateful to Bunnings.
“I won’t shop anywhere else,” he said.
