LI athletic director helps resuscitate ref at championship hoops game after saving another colleague 18 years ago
She’s two for two.A Long Island athletic director helped resuscitate a basketball referee who suddenly collapsed during a title game Saturday — nearly 20 years after saving another colleague in dire cardiac distress.Ref Joe Gaskin hit the floor while calling the Nassau County Class A final between Floral Park and West Hempstead at Farmingdale State College, causing longtime friend and Wantagh AD Jennifer Keane to fly into action.“It was the coach at West Hempstead that said, ‘Joe, are you OK?’ ” Keane, 47, told The Post, recalling Gaskin’s initial faltering on the floor.“And [Gaskin] just said, ‘Yeah, I need a minute, I can’t catch my breath,’ ” the AD said.“And then that was that,” and he crumpled to the ground, she said.“I just jumped up and ran right over to him.”Accompanied by a doctor and three nurses in attendance, Keane, who quickly moved the West Hempstead team away from the court, saw up close that the situation was quickly getting grim.“I could hear that he was struggling to breathe and started to turn blue,” she said of Gaskin, a grandfather of four who is in his 60s.
“The doctor was saying that he had a pulse, and then all of a sudden he said, ‘No pulse.’ “Tiffany Vargas, a family nurse practitioner who specializes in heart failure, was in the crowd cheering on Floral Park with her four kids and rushed over to help, too.She began doing chest compressions while two other nurses, Monica Lally and Darlene Sica, cut off Gaskin’s shirt.While this was going on, Keane dashed to grab a nearby automated external defibrillator and prepped it for the doctor to use.“I just kept saying, ‘Joe, stay with us.’ I just kept calling his name,” Keane recalled of the moments the ref was unconscious before being brought back with the AED.“When he came back, I just kept saying, ‘Joe, we got you.
You’re OK.We got you,’ and I kept holding his hand.”After the terrifying situation calmed down, Gaskin was given oxyg...