Buffalo Grove, Long Grove firefighters honored for lifesaving effort

Buffalo Grove trustees Monday paid tribute to the ideal kind of intergovernmental cooperation, one that ended up saving a life.

Buffalo Grove and Long Grove firefighters were honored for working together in April to rescue a 33-year-old Buffalo Grove resident whose heart stopped pumping blood while he was taking a shower.

Crews from both departments were on the scene within four minutes of dispatch at 6:34 a.m. April 18, finding Matt Rapaport not breathing and with no pulse on the floor of his Shambliss Lane home.

After determining Rapaport was suffering from ventricular fibrillation, which means the heart was quivering without pumping blood, crews used CPR and a cardiac defibrillator to restore his pulse and stabilize him before his transport to Northwest Community Hospital.

Watching it all that day was Buffalo Grove Fire Chief Terrence Vavra, who issued the crews a company citation Monday for their lifesaving efforts.

“The system worked really well,” Vavra said. “His wife called right away. Crews were dispatched immediately. And there was a cooperation between two different departments.

“After 30-plus years of doing this, I still get amazed at what they can do and how they work so well together. You wouldn’t have known they were from different departments.”

Among those honored were Buffalo Grove firefighters Brian Beck, Clark Pound, Rich Schiradelly, Chad McCormick, John Jason and Scott Wood, and Long Grove firefighters Brian Niminski and Katie Hayes and a student paramedic, Greg Hanik.

Rapaport spoke before the assembly, thanking the firefighters for saving his life.

“I don’t remember any of it,” he said. “I went to bed Tuesday and woke up Friday at the hospital. It’s been a pretty surreal experience for me. It really hasn’t hit me, what happened.

“But I appreciate each and every one of you,” without whom he “wouldn’t be standing here, talking to everybody,” he added.

Rapaport spent 10 days in the hospital and was back to work within three weeks. He hopes to resume life as it was before he suffered the ventricular fibrillation.

“I’m not good at just sitting around doing nothing,” he said.