PSAC In Depth Featuring Seton Hill's Chris Miller
By Mandy Housenick
Chris Miller didn't expect to be at the gym at 6 p.m. on Jan. 10. He had hoped to have only just been on his way home from a weekend getaway.
An impending snowstorm forced him and his friends to check out early, and in turn, Miller, a redshirt senior on Seton Hill's baseball team, dragged himself to Planet Fitness in North Huntington, Pa., after he arrived home.
Miller, a First Team All-PSAC catcher, just had his card swiped when he glanced over his right shoulder and saw a man laying unconscious on the ground.
“The girl at the desk had that deer-in-headlights look,” Miller said.
Miller didn't. He took control of the situation and ended up helping save a man's life.
“There was already a female doing CPR, but we needed someone who could get a little deeper and quicker,” he said. “There was an AED at his feet. I looked to the guy next to me and asked him to do CPR, and I put the pads on his chest.”
The AED, Miller said, analyzes the individual's heart rhythm. Once that happens, it determines whether he/she needs to have his/hear shocked back into rhythm. Thomas Harrity, 59, needed that.
“It said, 'Shock advised,'” Miller recalled. “There is this big, blinking button, so we shocked him once and the other guy kept doing CPR right after. He did about 30 compressions. I was about to take over, but that's when the paramedics got there, and we let them take over.”
Needing just a quick break and a minute to compose himself, Miller went to the restroom to wash his hands.
“In the time it took me to do that, the gentleman sat up,” Miller said. “I don't think it was even two minutes from the time I had shocked him.”
Although he was conscious, Miller said the man was still in a daze. The last thing he remembered was watching a football game while he was on the elliptical machine when everything went black.
The paramedics took Harrity to the hospital. Miller remained at the gym to get his workout in. However, it was unlike any other workout he had ever done.
“I'm 6-4, about 235 pounds. I'm not a runner at all,” Miller said. “I got on the treadmill and ran two miles like it was nothing. My adrenaline was through the roof. I went up to the man who helped me (Andrew Reuss) and I said, 'I can't come down from this.'
“It was hard to go to sleep that night because my adrenaline was so high.”
Knowing how to handle the potentially deadline situation wasn't hard for Miller.
The Serra Catholic High School graduate took an elective class in the fall semester during which he learned basic CPR, First Aid and AED usage. In addition, he said having to make split-second decisions on the baseball field, even though they aren't life-or-death decisions, helped him to remain calm during such a stressful time.
“The class definitely made me a little more confident,” he said. “If hadn't taken that class, I would have stepped up to the best of my abilities. But having taken that class, I knew where to put the pads. I knew that I had to tell everyone to step away.”
Miller's desire to follow in his father's footsteps and become a police officer also factored in. The criminal justice major saw and heard his father's stories about being sharp and the importance of making decisions in an instant.
“I have tried to model my life after him,” Miller said. “I try to go after everything without doubts or fears. [One time] he was taking my sister to school and found someone in the snow and he gave him CPR and he saved his life. A lot of this stuff I learned at baseball. Everything we do we face adversity. You can't be fearful. You have to give it your all.”
Harrity's family has never been so grateful for someone else willing to give his all.
“We're extremely fortunate, extremely blessed,” Jenni Harrity told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “He was lucky that others were nearby when he had the medical emergency.”
In addition, Jenni Harrity told the Tribune-Review that her father is expected to need heart surgery.
“I think the best thing coming out of this is all the press with people saying, 'Hey, I should learn CPR. That could happen to me. That could happen to one of my family members and it would help me save someone,'” Miller said.
Mandy Housenick is a graduate of Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She spent 13 years as a sports writer, including almost 10 at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., where she covered high school, college and pro sports. Highlights include having been the Phillies beat writer from 2009-13, having covered multiple NCAA Division I men's and women's basketball tournaments, four Phillies playoff runs, including the 2008 and 2009 World Series, and having appeared as a guest on radio and TV shows, including Comcast SportsNets' Daily News Live and Philly Sports Talk.