Schaumburg honors Dave & Buster’s kitchen manager for saving coworker’s life with CPR

Schaumburg leaders bestowed their “Outstanding Citizen” award on a Dave & Buster’s kitchen manager Tuesday whose use of CPR on a colleague suffering a heart attack was just the latest example of his life-saving know-how.

Bill Taylor was speaking with a health inspector doing a spot check of the restaurant in Streets of Woodfield in the early afternoon of Feb. 24 when a shift manager came back to tell him server Dan Modena had just passed out by the soda station.

Taylor found his 58-year-old colleague had no pulse, heartbeat or breathing and started applying chest compressions as Modena’s lips were turning blue.

Another employee grabbed towels to put under Modena’s head for some protection against the hard floor during Taylor’s vigorous resuscitation efforts.

“I don’t know how long it was — 30 seconds, a minute — but at some point his lips started to quiver,” Taylor said. “I knew there was some kind of life there. And finally, his eyes opened.”

Having given up his day off to fill in for a last-minute staffing shortfall, Modena woke up to see Bill and other familiar faces above him even as the ambulance was pulling up.

“Bill is the one who saved me even before paramedics arrived,” Modena said. “I don’t think the work stress or anything caused it. I have heart disease. By some grace of God, I happened to be at work rather than at home alone.”

His only immediate discomfort was soreness from the chest compressions and floor, which faded after three weeks.

Modena returned to work in April, but was sidelined by other medical issues that he is currently working through.

“I’m hoping to just get back to Dave & Buster’s,” he said. “They’ve been great to me since this all happened. I’m forever thankful to Bill and the rest of the team for all they’ve done.”

Taylor believes in being prepared.

“It’s about the ability to be helpful versus helpless,” he said.

This wasn’t the first time Taylor’s knowledge of life-saving skills were tested. The Aurora resident learned them decades ago when his now-35-year-old eldest son was just starting to play baseball as a child.

“I wanted to make sure I knew first-aid,” he said. “I knew if something happened and I didn’t have the skills to save him, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

His knowledge of the Heimlich maneuver twice saved patrons at the TGI Fridays in Oswego where he used to work, and dislodged an ice cube one of his other sons was choking on a few years ago.

Less than a week before saving Modena, he drove behind a pregnant bartender from Dave & Buster’s who’d insisted on taking her own car back to her husband in Hoffman Estates after her water broke. The husband hugged him for his care and vigilance.

“This is the way life is, and we roll the dice,” Taylor said. “Sometimes you’re there and sometimes you’re not. I’m resigned to it. I would hope someone would do it for me. You have to think about people, whether you know them or not. You have to think about humanity.”