It was a situation nobody expected in October of 2020: Outside his office, Springhill Toyota General Manager Mike Ricardy could hear a service advisor screaming for help. As he ran from his office to see what was wrong, he spotted a customer waiting in the Service Department slumped in her chair. Lisa Perry’s heart had stopped beating and she wasn’t breathing.
By sheer coincidence, three customers sitting inside the waiting room that day were nurses. They began administering CPR and used the automated external defibrillator (AED) installed in the dealership to help save Perry’s life. While most people who experience sudden cardiac arrest outside a hospital have only a 10% chance of survival, having people with CPR training or an AED on hand can increase those odds to 50%.
Tal Vickers, Dealer Principal at Springhill Toyota, made the decision to install the AED at the dealership after his father had a heart attack in 2016. The entire account was detailed in the May 2021 edition of Toyota Today magazine. Thanks to a nearby nurse, police officer, and AED, his father survived the episode. Vickers bought the AED for the dealership soon thereafter.
While Lisa Perry was extremely lucky, she did not have an easy road to recovery. She spent six weeks in a medically induced coma after the incident – only upon waking up a month and a half later did she learn what had happened to her. Early this year, she returned to the dealership to meet all those responsible for saving her life and was even interviewed by the local news about the ordeal.
Now more of Springhill Toyota’s staff are ready to spring into action: inspired by this story, around a dozen employees at the dealership have gotten CPR certifications since Perry’s incident. According to Tal Vickers, Springhill Toyota will “be prepared to do whatever we can to save a life.”
Springhill Toyota is a leading dealership in the United States, and a subscriber to VehiclesTEST’s Toyota virtual test drivers. Ricardy and his team use VehiclesTEST’s videos on their website and in emails.
For more information on using video at your dealership, on how to use Twitter or to set up a video blog, please reach out to Doug Thompson at VehiclesTEST.com (954-629-2242).