Looking out for co-worker makes vital difference

Kenny Roach and Jason Baze's quick thinking helped save their co-worker's life.

By Tim Potter:

South Central Kansas
Public Affairs Manager 

The task seemed to go so smoothly, so routinely. It was Sept. 30, and three KDOT co-workers gathered tree limbs along K-4 only about a mile from Hoisington.

That proximity to the town -- and its hospital -- would be crucial.

The whole experience would show the importance of watching out for a co-worker, of not hesitating in a potential health emergency.

The tree-limb removal had taken the three men only about five minutes. But as they finished, one of the three said something that drew the others’ attention -- “I feel hot.” Which was a sign of trouble because it wasn’t too hot or humid, and the man was known for being energetic. But now he was having to rest by the work truck after a relatively easy task.

“We looked at him, and something’s not right here,” Kenney Roach remembered thinking of his co-worker. With the suddenly ill man that day were Roach, an Equipment Operator, and Jason Baze, an Equipment Operator Senior.

“It was pretty out-of-the-ordinary for him,” Baze recalled.

Baze thought they were going to have to force the man to head for help in Hoisington, but they all quickly decided to go.

Baze directed his ill co-worker into the passenger seat up front in the extended cab, where it was roomy, accessible and where AC vents would give relief. Roach drove them on the short trip to the hospital in Hoisington, straight to the emergency room. Baze and Roach walked on either side of the man, ready to catch him if he started to collapse. (For privacy reasons, this article is not naming the man or detailing his condition.)

The two co-workers told a nurse about the man’s symptoms. “And they took him right into the room,” Baze said.

Baze and Roach would learn that it was critical that they wasted no time going to the hospital. Later, the man was taken by air ambulance to a Wichita hospital. He is recovering at home.

Baze and Roach have received regular first aid training from KDOT. Part of the training instills the idea that it’s better to seek help and not end up needing it than to wait too long, Baze said.

The training “kicks in when we need it,” said Michelle Burnett, Area Engineer in Great Bend.

Thinking back, Baze, Roach and Burnett said, it was a good thing the man wasn’t working alone that day.

“I feel like they saved his life,” she said.