Doing the right thing is truly lifesaving: Darren's story

There can be no better examples of Doing the Right Thing than saving someone’s life. And that’s exactly what Colleague Darren Jackson – a site operative who works at our Longniddry development in East Lothian – did one dark, rainy night in March this year.

The ‘someone’ was John, a machine operator who works with our Joint Venture partner Cruden Homes, who was about to finish work for the day when he suddenly collapsed by the site gate. 

“I got a panicked call from the gateman,” explained Darren, “saying he thought someone had had a heart attack and would I come and help.

“I rushed round to the gate to find John on the floor, his face blue and his eyes fixed – and without a pulse. We didn’t know it at this time, but John had actually had a heart attack caused by a bleed on the brain.”

Darren – who has worked at Places for People for five years and is fully first aid trained – acted quickly, instructing his Colleague Neil Hogarth to start CPR while he went upstairs to grab the on-site defibrillator. Although Darren had never had to use a defibrillator before, he calmly attached it to John’s chest and began the process of successfully shock-starting John’s heart. He and Neil then took it in turns to continue carrying out CPR until the emergency services arrived.

It would be quite a few days before John came round from the incident, during which time Darren was genuinely worried that the poor man wouldn’t pull through.

He said: “The next morning – the Friday, all we got told was that they thought John had suffered too much oxygen deprivation and was possibly brain damaged. So, obviously all weekend it was playing on my mind, and I didn’t sleep well, thinking I would go into work on the Monday and be told the worst.

“Thankfully, that didn’t happen. By the Tuesday I think, he had started squeezing his wife’s hand in response to her talking to him and by the end of the week, he was sat up having a cup of tea and biscuits, so he was basically on the road to making a full recovery. He is actually fully recovered now.” 

The part that Darren and his Colleague Neil played in helping to save a man’s life is nothing short of heroic, however Darren’s take on the matter is much more pragmatic, as he explains:

“I think in situations like that most people are either fight or flight – either you can’t deal with it, or you go into autopilot, which is what I did. I just followed my first aid training and thankfully we got a positive result. 

“For me the end result is the main thing, the fact that John’s ok and we managed to do what we did for him.”

Spoken like a true hero. Well done Darren!