Heart Attack Survivor Thanks Temple Terrace Paramedics

Eric Stockley handed a bouquet of flowers to Temple Terrace firefighter/paramedic Marshia Hall. There were 15 roses in the bunch—one for every year since the day Marshia helped save his life.

Eric was 45 years old the day he almost died. It started out like any other day. Eric, a registered nurse who worked for the DeSoto County Health Department, was in Temple Terrace for tuberculosis training. Afterward, he and a colleague went to a nearby gym that used to be located on Fowler Avenue.

While working out, Eric felt pressure between his shoulder blades. Then, he started sweating—more than he usually did when exercising.

“The sweat—it was just coming out of my legs—every pore in my body,” he said.

When he began projectile vomiting, he knew something was seriously wrong. He went to the front desk and told the receptionist that he was having a heart attack.

“Just as I said that, my heart stopped beating,” he recalled.

Gym personnel called 9-1-1, and Marshia and a young rookie named Keith Chapman soon arrived.

Marshia, who has worked at the fire department since 1992, said she still remembers giving Eric electrical shock treatment, restarting his heart several times on the way to University Community Hospital. At one point, Eric came to. He told Marshia he was engaged. He was getting married the following year, and he had already bought the suit.

“It was his priority at that point,” Marshia recalled, adding that part of what saves a person’s life is his or her will to live. “You have to want it badly—and he did.”

Eric’s fiancée, Melodi, was an admitted wreck when she got a collect call from UCH later that night. The caller said his name was Eric, but Melodi knew it wasn’t Eric’s voice.

“I initially thought ‘car accident,’” she said, “because I would have never thought ‘heart attack.’”

Eric was a healthy vegetarian with only 8 percent body fat. He was active and had just completed a 10,000-mile bicycle trek across Australia. But none of that mattered.

Eric has a disease called atherosclerosis—a hardening of the arteries. On the day of his heart attack, plaque had dislodged and became wedged in one of the arteries of his heart.

Melodi said she still remembers talking to the man on the other end of the collect call.

“As he was talking, I was sinking down to the floor,” she said.

She was too upset to drive, so her dad took her to the hospital to be with her fiancé.

“I called the nurse about every 15 minutes that night,” she said.

Eric recovered, and Marshia and Keith came back to the hospital to check on him the next day.

“That makes a big difference psychologically,” Eric said.

Since his heart attack, Eric has embraced life and re-evaluated his priorities. He married Melodi just like he had planned. He returned to cycling, bodybuilding and scuba diving. He attended his daughter’s wedding in Las Vegas. He held his two grandchildren when they were born. He was with his mother when she passed away in his native England.

“All my life I had worked two or three jobs for vacations and more materialistic things,” he said. “It made me realize to stop and smell the roses.”

Eric now lives in Port Charlotte, but every few years, he comes back to Temple Terrace to thank the fire department and paramedics for what they did to save his life.

“You just can’t put it into words when someone gives you your life back,” he said.

On May 13, the day before his 60th birthday, Eric visited Fire Station 1 with Melodi for the 15th anniversary of his near-death experience. He hugged Temple Terrace firefighters and paramedics, reminisced about the fateful day, and shared pizza and birthday cake with them.

“I’m just glad to see him here and happy,” said Keith, who is now the Temple Terrace fire chief. “We were glad to have been there.”

Marshia held her bouquet of flowers and watched Eric talk to the other firefighters.

“It’s fantastic for us,” she said. “It makes you feel like, ‘I’ve chosen right for my life to do something so good for someone.’ It’s huge for all of us.”