The San Francisco Fire Department team.

The man had just picked up his chihuahua, Sexy, from the veterinarian. He walked around the corner, heading south on Harrison Street, and was approaching a delivery truck when a witness, Reagan Reid, saw him fall backwards suddenly and hit his head.

Reid was on the verge of giving CPR when firefighters and police arrived and took over. They cut open his shirt, cut his green khaki pants and went to work. The man, who appeared to be in this 50s, was in cardiac arrest.

A team of five medical workers pumped his heart from 5:05 to 5:30 p.m., taking turns so that the pressure and action never let up. The team defibrillated four times, administered three rounds of injections and carefully monitored an air pump in the man’s mouth.

Reid, Sexy in her lap, watched nearby. Medical workers had found the dog’s papers. Sexy had been spayed and given all his shots.

At one point a medical worker pulled out a yellow plastic bag. The onlookers gasped and then watched, relieved, as a medical worker filled the bag with the patient’s blue jacket, wallet and watch and his dog’s papers.

The man was still breathing, and the team continued their work. Then, swiftly, they lifted their patient onto a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance.

A medic said it was not clear what would happen. The man was still in cardiac arrest. Would he make it? “We hope so,” she said.

I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.

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4 Comments

  1. I just spoke with Animal Control. They stated that Sexy has been picked up by her owner. I assume now that this man did indeed make it.

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    1. Thanks Lydia for reporting this! I’m going to try and check in w/Animal Control again today on Sexy and hopefully I can also learn about his condition.

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