The room was chaotic, people were frantic, but Annemarie Kougias of Brockton tried to be cool as she approached the man suffering from sudden cardiac arrest.
He wasn't breathing, and his co-worker was on top of him, pounding his chest and urging him to hold on.
"I knew this was real," Kougias said.
Three weeks earlier, she would have been just as frantic as everyone around her. But she had, by chance, just completed a training program for parents of young athletes. And if the doctors from Brockton Hospital taught this hockey mom anything, it was to stay calm.
So she coolly guided the co-worker and a police officer through the lessons of CPR and the use of a defibrillator.
"The whole time I didn't think we'd be successful, I really didn't," Kougias said. "What we did made the difference."
The man, a custodian at Boston University, survived. And the difference that Kougias made has taught her a lesson.
The kind of training she went through, which is designed for parents and coaches, should be available in every school and at every youth sporting event in the state, she said, adding that every coach and parent should be trained.
Kougias had participated in a Youth Athletic First Responder Program run by Brockton Hospital and the Brockton Fire Department. The program was offered in Brockton and Canton, and a session is scheduled for Monday in East Bridgewater.
Doctors, nurses, and Fire Department paramedics instruct parents on how to respond to youth sports injuries. They teach cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the use of automatic external defibrillators, and they host lectures on youth sports injuries and how to prevent them. The program is for youth sports coaches and parents who could serve as first responders, said Rob Brogna, head of marketing at Brockton Hospital.
"Each year, a growing number of youth athletes suffer sudden cardiac arrest while playing sports," he said. "In such cases, immediate attention by first responders can mean the difference between life and death."
Kougias recalled doctors telling the participants in the program that they'd be more likely to treat a grandparent in the stands than one of the players. She said she still finds that, since taking the class, she looks around for a defibrillator whenever she walks into a hockey rink. She'd like to see more, at her younger daughter's soccer games, and other events.
"I'm all about getting this equipment and getting people trained," she said, adding jokingly, "Now, I just want other people in my life to be trained so that they could help me."
Brockton Hospital is proud of its student and how her training paid off. On that day at BU two weeks ago, Brogna said, "she went over, just out of nowhere, to take control of the situation."
As the stricken man lay on the floor of the university's ballroom, Kougias went through exactly what she had learned in class - explaining to the patient's co-worker how to deliver 30 pushes to the chest, then wait. Meanwhile, a police officer readied the defibrillator, then Kougias set it on the man's chest, and activated it. She listened for heartbeat, checked for pulse, and repeated the procedure. Paramedics arrived, and soon Kougias saw the man's body regaining color.
"He's alive," she told the co-worker. "He wasn't alive when you found him."
She has since been in touch with the custodian and his co-worker. Doctors have said that a minute longer without help could have left the man in a vegetative state.
"The cost of doing nothing could be that person not making it," she said. "Whatever you do, it's better than not doing anything."