Merrick teen saves dad after heart attack

On Feb. 3, Doug Oggeri was having a normal day. The 55-year-old Merrick resident shoveled snow in front of his Merrick home and then went inside to use the computer.

Then he had a heart attack.

After hearing a loud noise, his wife, Linda, and daughter Colleen, 18, discovered him on the floor. He wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

Colleen began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to her father until emergency medical technicians arrived 10 minutes later.

“I just knew I had to do something,” said Oggeri, a Calhoun High School senior. “I wasn’t ready to think about not having my father with me at my prom or at my graduation.”

The EMTs shocked Oggeri’s heart twice, and then rushed him to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where staff members began hypothermia therapy, which lowers the body temperature and reduces oxygen demand for the heart and other organs.

When stabilized, Oggeri was transferred to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where Rajiv Jauhar, the hospital’s director of interventional cardiology, opened the blockages in his arteries with balloon angioplasty and stainless steel stents.

Oggeri survived.

He was discharged on Friday, Feb. 11, and due to the cardiac arrest he suffered and the possibility of cardiac arrhythmias occurring, Oggeri now wears a Life Vest, a defibrillator vest that monitors his heartbeat and will provide a shock to his heart in less than a minute if it detects life-threatening rhythms.

Colleen Oggeri was trained in CPR by the Merrick Police Athletic League. “I’m so happy that I learned CPR,” she said. “It’s a skill that every young person should learn.” It was her quick response, along with treatment by EMTS and NUMC and LIJ doctors, that saved her father’s life, according to officials.

“I feel like I’ve been given another chance,” Oggeri said. “I hope people will learn the lessons I’ve learned -- take care of your heart, don’t overdo it and learn CPR.”

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