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Woman Thanks North Port Police Detective For Her Life

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By JOHN DAVIS

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: May 7, 2008

NORTH PORT - On Monday, Detective Lenny Hills received a call from a woman he had not seen in weeks. She said, "I died the other day at the school, and you brought me back."

The call came from Carla Bruce, who got out of the hospital Friday after collapsing on the playground at Cranberry Elementary School on April 19.

Bruce, 45, had taken her daughters, Jessica, 8, and Kenna, 3, to play at the school's playground that Saturday. She bent down to pet a dog and collapsed on the sidewalk. Her husband, director of radiology at Venice Regional Medical Center, said his wife did not have a heart attack.

"Basically, somebody just turned the light switch off," Rob Bruce said Tuesday.

With Carla Bruce prone on the sidewalk, Jessica ran for help. Hills, who was off duty, saw what was going on and retrieved a first-aid kit from his car.

For the next six minutes, Hills pumped air into Carla Bruce's mouth as he talked bystander Mark Annis through the procedure of chest compressions.

When paramedics arrived, they had to shock her three times with a defibrillator to get her heart pumping. She was hospitalized for two weeks. Doctors gave her an internal defibrillator, as a precaution.

With the surgery scar on her left shoulder barely starting to heal, Carla Bruce went to the North Port Police Department on Tuesday to thank Hills for saving her.

"They only gave me a 15 percent chance of coming through," she said.

It turns out the oxygen Hills and Annis pumped through her body likely saved Bruce's brain, giving her the chance she needed to recover from the heart stoppage, which has not been explained.

Hearing that Hills is a Boston Celtics fan, the Bruces used some family connections to get him a basketball signed by NBA Hall of Famer John Havilcek, who wrote, "To Detective Lenny Hills, a true hero."

Hills, an eight-year veteran of the department, does not see himself as a hero. In fact, after helping Bruce, he did not tell many people what had happened.

"For me to do something like that, I did my job," he said Tuesday.

The reunion with the Bruces and the presentation of the basketball, all coordinated behind the scenes by the Bruce family and Police Chief Terry Lewis, surprised Hills.

"Just the thank you you gave me on the phone the other day was enough," Hills told Carla Bruce on Tuesday.

Hills said he was elated that he could help save her.

"For me, inside, I just ran the Boston Marathon, me doing something like that," he said.

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