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The cardiac arrest that killed her active young son broke a St. Petersburg woman's heart. Her memorial to him could preserve the lives of other people.
By THOMAS ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 29, 2002
The only thing that made any sense was that it didn't make any sense.
Matt Bostic was strong and fast and just 10 days away from his 21st birthday. He had an apartment, a white '91 Mustang, a girlfriend and a promising career as an accounts manager at Global Access Unlimited, a computer parts company in Largo.
And he never got sick.
After Matt ate lunch on Friday, April 13, 2000, one of his friends challenged him to a foot race outside his office. They stepped off what they thought was 50 yards, crouched low and took off. Matt won. Of course.
But moments after he crossed the finish line, he turned around, smiled to his friends and collapsed. His friends thought he was joking. Then they thought he had fainted. They carried him into the shade. Matt began turning blue. He wasn't breathing. Someone dialed 911.
In the emergency room at Northside Hospital, Matt's heart was shocked back to life by a defibrillator. But it took 27 attempts.
Finally, Matt was stabilized. But too much damage had been done. Although his heart was beating again, tests showed he had no brain activity. Three days later, on Sunday, he was taken off life support. He died about 40 minutes later.
His heart was slightly enlarged, his mother said, but that might not have been the cause. His father, Paul Bostic, has a history of vascular problems -- he'd had three strokes by the time he was 40. So maybe that was a contributing factor.
Patty Latimer, Matt's mom, is sitting on the deck in the back yard of her St. Petersburg home. It's early evening, and a strong breeze from the west is finally cutting through the heat. Over her shoulder, down by the fence, are the 12 rose bushes she planted last summer. Twelve was Matt's favorite number.
"I could spend my whole life trying to figure out why he died," she said. "But even the pathologist said we might never know for sure."
So what was she going to do? She'd lost one of her two children. It was like losing an arm. Only much, much worse.
Matt's heart stopped, she said. She doesn't blame anyone. But it could have been restarted. If there had been an AED on hand.
An automated external defibrillator.
They're not much bigger than a lunchbox and weigh 5 to 7 pounds. By following three simple steps, a user can apply an electric shock to someone whose heart has stopped beating. That's important because when the heart stops beating regularly, and the brain isn't receiving oxygen, every second counts. A sixth-grader can be taught how to use an AED, and it won't deliver a shock if the victim doesn't need one. Even if you press the SHOCK button.
So that's what she would do. That was the way she would try to ease her pain. Put AEDs everywhere she could, starting with schools.
Latimer, along with Matt's co-workers at Global Access, set up the Matthew Bostic Memorial Scholarship and Research Fund. Part of the money raised would provide partial scholarships to two high school seniors. The first school she chose was Boca Ciega High in Gulfport, because that's where Matt played football, soccer and tennis.
And part of the money would go toward buying AEDs for local schools. The AEDs cost about $2,500-$3,000 each, but the St. Petersburg Fire Department agreed to provide training for free.
"All the schools have to do is replace the battery," Latimer said. "And the batteries last 10 years."
While she was getting permission to visit other area schools and talk to principals about getting AEDs, she stumbled onto something she found . . . interesting.
The Pinellas County school administration building in Largo has an AED. But of the 140 schools in the county, only one has the device.
Boca Ciega High. It's the one donated by the fund.
In New York City, where it takes an average of more than nine minutes for medical emergency vehicles to arrive at the scene of a sudden cardiac arrest, the survival rate is less than 2 percent.
In Seattle, where the average response time is less then seven minutes, the survival rate is 20 percent.
A difference of just 120 seconds.
(The average medical emergency response time in St. Petersburg is four minutes and 29 seconds.)
The American Heart Association estimates that at least 50,000 deaths could be prevented each year if AEDs were more widely available in locations where large numbers of people gather, such as schools, golf courses, theme parks, hotels and health clubs.
"We get at least one call every Sunday to go to a church," said Lt. Joel Granata of the St. Petersburg Fire & Rescue Department. "And we must go to nursing homes about 10 times a day."
It can happen anywhere. Any time.
Take Monday, April 15. Income Tax day. The day before the two-year anniversary of Matt Bostic's death.
It was just before 6 p.m. The Lifestyle Family Fitness center in St. Petersburg was packed with people who had just gotten off work.
Granata had been on the treadmill about an hour when someone he knew grabbed him by the arm and said he needed to go downstairs immediately. An elderly man who had been playing racquetball was having a heart attack.
When he got to the man, Granata found that one of the gym's trainers was performing CPR and an off-duty nurse was doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "I told them I was a paramedic and I checked for a pulse," Granata said. "There wasn't one. The man was turning blue."
Granata took over chest compression and waited for paramedics to arrive. But it wasn't an ambulance that responded; the closest ones were on other calls.
It was a ladder truck from Station 9 that pulled up first.
But like all St. Petersburg Fire Department vehicles, the truck had an AED on board.
"They came in, handed me the AED, I put on the chest pads, turned it on, followed the instructions and shocked the patient," Granata explained. "I checked for a pulse. It was good and strong pulse. Then we waited for the ambulance to take him to the hospital."
Granata said the man, a 75-year-old retired businessman, regained consciousness in the ambulance. He was taken to Northside Hospital, the same hospital where Matt Bostic died. Only this heart attack victim survived and eventually went home.
"We didn't need to shock him again because that little AED put his heart back into a normal rhythm," Granata said.
Last April, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all U.S. airlines to carry defibrillators on all but the smallest flights. But few if any other industries offer the same blanket protection, including the health-club industry.
Fewer than 5 percent of health clubs have portable defibrillators, but 60 percent should have them within five years, John McCarthy, executive director of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, said last week.
The industry estimates there are 30-million health club members, which makes some cases of cardiac arrest a statistical certainty.
Saving lives is the main goal, but liability is a key issue. Should trainers, hotel clerks or golf course employees worry about using AEDs for fear of being sued if something goes wrong?
No, according to a law passed by the Florida Legislature last June. The Cardiac Arrest Survival Act gives companies at least some legal protection if they are sued for using an AED.
Still, there is hesitation.
Peggy Johns, curriculum supervisor for prekindergarten through 12th-grade health education for Pinellas County schools, said she thinks most schools will have AEDs eventually. "But it will be a lengthy process," she said. "For one, there's the cost. And training and implementation for the personnel who would use them."
As for the AED at the school district's central administration building in Largo, Johns said she was able to get it because of a donation from the American Heart Association. "And there are over 500 adults, some of them older, who work in that building every day. From a public health perspective, you have to analyze the number of people who have sudden cardiac arrest and look at the likely usage.
"There are so many health needs," she added, "and this is certainly one of them. But I can't say I'm distressed that they're not in every school right now because I see many other needs that actually have a greater impact to our community. Working with teen pregnancy, for instance. And I'd love to see more money put into accident prevention for children.
"We have 140 schools in Pinellas. Even if the AEDs were $2,000 apiece, you're talking over $250,000. And we have such limited resources."
Back on Patty Latimer's deck, the light is fading and the bugs are coming out. It's almost time to go in for the night.
She says the annual fundraising dinner is May 18 at Global Access. They'll have a raffle and an auction and maybe a dunk tank. They raised about $9,000 last year.
David Latimer, Patty's husband, makes a bold prediction. He says he expects to have AEDs in three more schools within the next three months.
Patty arches an eyebrow and shoots David a surprised look.
"Really?" she asks. "Have you looked at our bank account?"
David smiles.
"Okay," he says. "Maybe only two schools."
For information about the Matthew Bostic Fund, call (727) 343-5290.