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Yandel Parra playing in a game last season. MARIANNE BARNETT
Yandel Parra playing in a game last season. MARIANNE BARNETT
Yandel Parra died, albeit only for a minute or two, on the evening of January 27.
While waiting for a basketball game to finish in the East Hampton High School gym so they could get started with winter workouts, Parra and his Bonac boys soccer teammates played a quick pickup game of futsal, an indoor version of soccer played with a smaller and softer ball, usually with five players on each side including a goal keeper. As more and more players showed up for the workout, and the basketball game concluded, East Hampton varsity boys soccer head coach Don McGovern called his players over so captains could start picking teams for a full game.
That’s when Parra, a senior, began to have a medical episode. He collapsed among his teammates, and those in attendance were unsure of what exactly was happening. It was eventually determined that he had a heart deformity and suffered a cardiac arrest.
According to those who witnessed the situation, Parra had very labored breathing and was going in and out of consciousness. That’s when McGovern jumped into action. He had a few of his players run and alert the Pondview Security guards, Thomas Lambert and Chris Schneider, who were working that night while he stayed with Parra and called 911.
Lambert, 54, an East Quogue resident, was a police officer in New York City for 11 years and an East Hampton Town Police officer for nine years before joining East Hampton Town Marine Patrol in 2003, and now also works with Pondview Security, so he was no stranger to dealing with medical emergencies. But even he admitted it was a unique situation in that he was dealing with a teenager who appeared to be in great physical health.
But, in reality, Parra was losing precious time, and from multiple accounts, he stopped breathing a few times for short spurts. Essentially, he was clinically dead during that time.
“I was outside checking the doors to make sure they were locked, which is something we do regularly, when my partner called me to the gym for an emergency,” Lambert explained. “I just figured someone got hurt and it was something simple like that.
“When I got into the gym, Yandel was down on the ground and it appeared at first that he was having a seizure. He had agonal breaths,” Lambert continued. “I immediately ran by the main office and got the AED and we hooked it up. It analyzed Yandel and said ‘clear for shock,’ which made it obvious at that point his heart was having some sort of issue.”
Lambert said it certainly helped that he had gotten recertified through marine patrol the week before. After the AED shocked Parra, Lambert and his partner Schneider started CPR, with Lambert doing the chest compressions and Schneider mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which they continued until EMS came.
Eduardo Calle, another senior on the Bonac boys soccer team and a good friend of Parra, also snapped into action. He helped clear the gym of teammates so they didn’t have to witness seeing their teammate being revived, and he also called Parra’s parents to alert them of the situation and to let them know they should hurry to the high school.
“Me, personally, I was, like, in shock,” Calle said. “I didn’t really know what was wrong — one minute he was fine and then he wasn’t. I thought he hit his head when he collapsed, but then his breathing, it was almost like he was snoring, and he would try to get up but couldn’t, and then when he wasn’t responding that’s when I knew something was wrong because I’ve known Yandel a long time and it’s not like him to be like that.”
Calle went to meet Parra’s parents at one of the entrances to the school when he peeked into the gym and saw his friend lying on the gym floor and starting to lose his color.
“As I was walking past, I couldn’t help but look and that was hard for me,” he said. “He was just lying there on the ground. They had his shirt ripped open, using the AED. I was just trying to get his parents and everything kind of hit me. I was struggling. I was shaking. I was almost crying.”
Parra’s parents got to the school just about at the time that the paramedics arrived. They rushed Parra to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. From multiple accounts, he had to be shocked and revived once again in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. McGovern, Lambert and Schneider all went to the hospital, where they met with East Hampton Athletic Director Kathy Masterson.
“Donnie, Chris and Tom are true heroes in all sense of the word,” Masterson said. “When Yandel went down, Don tended to him. His players ran out and got security, security grabbed the AED. They were also instrumental in doing CPR. One of the players got their teammates out of the gym. It was so text book and what you want to happen in a terrible situation.
“But I can’t say enough about those three men and our team and what they did,” she added. “I can not be more proud of them.”
Once he was stabilized, Parra eventually had to be transferred via another ambulance to Stony Brook Hospital later that night, where they eventually found, after numerous tests and scans, that Parra was apparently born with an artery out of place, and because of that it did not have the correct blood flow pumping into his heart, which caused him to go into cardiac arrest.
Days later, Parra was once again transferred to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he had open heart surgery to fix the defect and also had an internal defibrillator, also known as an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), a small electronic device that monitors the heart rhythm and delivers an electrical shock if it detects a life-threatening arrhythmia (abnormal heartbeat), put in.
After continued rehabilitation at Cornell, Parra was released from the hospital the day before Valentine’s Day, less than three weeks from when the incident occurred, while school was out for winter recess. He returned to school with the rest of his classmates the following week.
Parra, when reached this past Saturday, said the only thing he remembers of that evening is getting in the car with a friend to head to the workout.
“I just woke up in the hospital. I was nervous. I was scared. I was looking for my parents,” he said. “My mom, doctor were near me. I asked him what happened and he said I went into cardiac arrest. I had no words, I was in shock. I was just really happy I was alive.”
Parra said he had no inclination that he would suffer from such a medical emergency in the days or weeks leading up to it. Thinking back, though, he does remember always getting tired easily but he just figured it was from being out of shape.
But returning to school and being back with his friends and teachers felt good, Parra said. And even though he wasn’t yet medically cleared to participate, Parra attended every practice once soccer started up in late August. It was at a practice last month when Parra got a message from the school doctor that he was cleared to play — something no one thought was going to happen — and something he was able to enjoy with his coaches and teammates that day.
After playing in the prerequisite number of practices, Parra eventually returned to game action on September 20 at Comsewogue.
“It was a sport ever since I was kid I loved,” he said. “It was the best feeling getting back to playing with my teammates, seeing Coach McGovern, being back to practice, kicking a ball around. It was a good time with my friends.”
Parra admitted he was nervous to play in his first game back, but also happy. He nearly scored a goal when he took on multiple Comsewogue defenders near the end line and beat them. But it was his play that did lead to a goal by his good friend Calle.
Parra played in three games this season for the Bonackers before he came down with a knee injury that likely flared up, he, McGovern and his doctors said, due to not playing for so long because of his heart issue.
East Hampton wound up having one of its worst seasons in quite some time, finishing with a 2-12-2 League II record. But when put into perspective against real life challenges, McGovern said it’s nothing when it comes to one his player’s health and life.
“We lost some really tight games, but as I told the players, I can’t get mad at you,” he said. “The effort was there, and the positive thing is that Yandel is here with us and he’s back playing the game he loves to play. We’ll learn from the mistakes that we made, but in a little bit of a way it puts things in perfect perspective — what this kid dealt with is life and what he’s been through and what his family has been through is unimaginable.”
Parra said he’s certainly grateful for everyone that chipped in saving his life that night on January 27. It’s something he and his family will never forget.
“It was just a crazy experience that obviously had a major impact on me, my life, my family,” he said. “I’ll just always remember what happened to me and always be grateful that everyone that helped — my teammates, my coach, the security guards. I’m just really happy to be here.”
