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Heroism in local residents recognized by city commission

The human heart is a vital and critical component of our anatomies. The doctors will tell you it’s a necessary organ, continually pumping and diffusing blood and oxygen throughout our bodies, giving us the very elements we need to keep moving, breathing and living.

An all-encompassing definition of “heart,” though, can go beyond the physical limitations of the human body.

As the poets and romance writers will opine, our hearts can be the source of a mother’s undying and boundless love for her child, and at the same time it can be the helpless victim, broken to pieces by unreciprocated feelings of desire and admiration for another.

The heart of rock and roll, as Huey Lewis and the News once famously noted, is still beating clear across the country. Meanwhile, activists, developers or realtors might tell us all about the unique heart and soul of a vibrant neighborhood or community.

But the human heart, as constant and regular as its beating may be, can fail in a moment’s notice.

That’s reportedly what happened earlier this month to a man police recently identified as Steven Ritola. Reading a letter from one of his employees, police Chief Blake Rieboldt at the Marquette City Commission meeting last week outlined a series of events that were said to have saved Ritola’s life.

On March 2, authorities received a 911 call from Michele Gransinger that brought them to a vehicle on Wright Street in Marquette Township, the location of then unconscious Ritola, who had gone into cardiac arrest along the side of the road.

Initial revival efforts, with the assistance of operators at Marquette County Central Dispatch, were undertaken by Gene Gransinger and an unknown passerby who had stopped to help.

Officers from the Marquette Police Department and Northern Michigan University Public Safety were on scene first and took over, performing CPR and using a defibrillator to help Ritola begin recovering, until EMS personnel arrived and handled it from there.

In the letter read by Rieboldt and written by Marquette police Sgt. Jackie Sweeney, Ritola was reportedly conscious and talking by the time he was loaded into the ambulance and on his way to the hospital.

“I personally feel that if it wasn’t for the actions of Michele and Gene Gransinger, and these officers (and) dispatchers involved, Mr. (Steven) Ritola may not still be alive today,” Rieboldt read from Sweeney’s letter, as reported in a Journal article on the matter.

Sweeney nominated the individuals involved in the incident to be honored by the Marquette City Commission with lifesaving awards, which happened Monday night. Those individuals receiving the awards were: the Gransingers; central dispatch operators John Devold, Andrew VanOosterhout and Cheryl Grove; NMU Public Safety officers Jason Swanson, Jeff Stampee and Zane Weaver; and officers Ben Takala and James Britton of the Marquette Police Department.

The anonymous “good Samaritan” who stopped to help, to the best of our knowledge, remains unknown.

It may sound theatrical or overstated, but the hearts of those first responders and the others have saved the life of a man whose heart was failing him. The authorities and emergency personnel get into their uniforms every day to help others and serve their communities, while the citizens and passersby in this situation simply cared enough to stop and do what they could. All of them had the courage and heart to help someone in need.

These people deserve recognition for the selfless acts they took in saving another’s life. Police officers, dispatchers, emergency responders, firefighters and all the others who take these types of actions each day do so very often with little acknowledgement from the general public. And the everyday average citizen who steps up to the challenge when hurled into a situation such as this are no less deserving of praise.

This avoided tragedy is just one more example of neighbors helping neighbors, and after an event such as this, it seems loud and clear that the heartbeat of our community here in the Upper Peninsula is a strong one.

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