A REAL LIFESAVER

COEUR d’ALENE — When his Coeur d’Alene teachers asked Justin Wearne what he planned to do with his life, he didn’t have a pat answer.

He liked playing basketball, sure, and baseball.

But long term?

Saving other people’s lives wasn’t something he thought of doing for a living.

These days, the Coeur d’Alene firefighter saves lives even when he’s on vacation — 30,000 feet over Mexico.

The fact tickles George Iredale.

“I was sitting in my chair,” Iredale, 91, recalled in a phone interview Thursday with The Press, “sipping a cup of water, and the next thing I know, I’m on my back in the aisle and this guy is giving me CPR.”

Iredale, a World War II veteran and former merchant marine from Oregon, was on his way to Puerto Vallarta to meet his daughter. The perennial traveler, who spent most of his working life on boats and shore leave in the Pacific, was going to show his daughter the town.

While sitting in an aisle seat, however, on a flight from Oakland to the Mexican resort town, he suffered a heart attack.

Wearne sat in an aisle seat, reading, not far behind Iredale, while Wearne’s wife, Ramsey Elementary school teacher Amy Wearne, sat in an aisle seat across from her husband.

“My son was watching a movie,” Wearne said.

He felt a slap on his arm. His wife noticed the man in the aisle seat drop his cup to the floor and slump in his seat. She suspected something was amiss.

“She hit me,” Wearne said. He got up to check on the man — Iredale — and checked his vital signs.

“He had a couple gasping breaths,” Wearne said. “His pulse was gone.”

Wearne, and a nurse who also jumped in, laid Iredale on the floor in the aisle and Wearne began CPR.

Eventually they found a pulse, and Iredale, disoriented from the ordeal, sat up.

Two weeks later, Wearne and his family are home in Coeur d’Alene, and Iredale, who has since been outfitted with a pacemaker, is living with his daughter, Donna Jones, in Santa Rosa, Calif.

It’s only temporary, Iredale said.

“I can’t do anything for six weeks,” he said. “I can’t drive.”

He would drive home to Coos Bay, if he was allowed. And he would do the morning exercise routine that has kept him fit and includes a healthy dose of morning pushups.

“I probably have a month yet to go on that,” he said.

Jones, who said her father was gone at sea most of her life, is glad to have her dad back.

“When I was young he was always gone, so I don’t want to miss his older years,” Jones said.

After being revived, her dad was directed to a hospital, Jones said, but he refused an ambulance or to be admitted because of the cost.

“He has money,” Jones said. “He grew up in the (Great) Depression, so every penny counts.”

Iredale took a taxi to see the doctor. Then, amid great protestations from the hospital staff, he walked out of the facility, booked a flight home and showed up at his daughter’s California home where he underwent surgery.

Iredale couldn’t provide his daughter details of what happened on the flight to Puerto Vallarta. All he said was that a fireman from Coeur d’Alene saved his life.

“If this young man hadn’t jumped in, no one else would have done it,” Jones said.

Wearne, who was directionless after high school almost 20 years ago and enrolled in a fire science program at the behest of friends, appreciates the kind words the family has showered on him.

Although he has regularly administered CPR in the 11 years he has worked for the department, jump-starting back to life someone without a pulse is pretty unusual, Wearne said.

“Bringing people back with CPR doesn’t happen that often,” Wearne said. “The quicker you can get to a person, the better chance you have at them surviving.”

Having her dad alive and well after such an ordeal is nothing short of a miracle, Jones said.

“In his later years, (my dad and I) have become very close, traveling together and enjoying each other’s company,” Jones said. “That would have all ended way too soon if it had not been for the efforts of Justin... and we just want to thank him.”