The importance of 911 dispatchers is being celebrated by former Husker football player DeMoine Adams and his family. Today Adams and his wife Fara met with 911 dispatcher Joey Mims who helped save DeMoine’s life by instructing Fara to give him CPR on January 13. Adams says it all started around 2:00 in the morning.
“I woke up with some tightness in my chest and decided to get up and walk toward the restroom. I felt myself get dizzy and lightheaded and turned around to go back to bed and that’s all I remember.”
Fara Adams says after hearing a loud crash in the bedroom she flipped on the light and saw that her husband had collapsed on the floor. “He was not responsive and I immediately knew there was something wrong and called 911 and they answered right away,” Adams says. “I had them on speaker phone and they could hear my husband gasping for air.”
That’s when Mims. who’s been a dispatcher for more than a year, stepped into the picture. “I got the address where they were going. She says he was in a seizure and I tried to see if he was breathing normally and she said no and we got CPR started.”
Fara works in the medical field and had never performed CPR before. “When you are scared and in shock, it’s helpful to have someone count you through it,” Adams says. “He said I want you to count out loud so I can hear you, one and two and three and four as I am doing chest compressions.”
Adams says she can’t thank Mims enough for being the voice on the other end of the phone that she needed to hear. “He was so calm, talking me through the entire thing I felt such ease. I appreciated it so much everyone from the whole emergency response team was just so professional and efficient.”
Mims says he’s grateful that he had the chance to save a life. “It’s always refreshing when you get that response from the firefighters on the scene to hear that they are breathing or at least there is a pulse.”
Adams, who is the current TeamMates CEO, says it turns out he has a small blood clot on a lung and is taking medication to dissolve it. I’m feeling good, I’m doing good. It was a scare a couple of weeks ago and very grateful for my wife and most importantly just expertise of 911, the dispatchers and just incredible teamwork for me to be standing here today.”