Tam Softball Coach Earns 'Save' off the Diamond

softball coach Mike Wills got some bad news when he got a call from his team’s scorekeeper last Monday.

No, it had nothing to do with the Red-tailed Hawks’ mini-slump.

“He said, and these are his exact words, ‘My heart feels like it’s beating at 180 mph,’” Wills recalled.

“My response to that was, ‘You should probably have that looked at.’”

After the scorekeeper, who asked that his name not be used in this story, convinced his friend they could continue their softball conversation, Wills detected another problem.

“He started slurring his words,” the coach noted.

Now it didn’t matter that the scorekeeper, a Mill Valley resident whose daughter plays outfield for the Tam team, said he was OK. Wills, who has medical training as a volunteer in the Sebastopol Police Department, knew exactly what to do next.

“Because of my training in stroke awareness, as a first responder, we’re trained to ask a series of questions,” said Wills, a Petaluma resident. “So I asked, ‘Do you know where you are?’ He didn’t know.

“At that time I told him, ‘I’m hanging up on you. I’m going to get help.’”

Amazingly, within five minutes, the had an officer and a paramedic at the man’s house. He was passed out on the floor when they arrived, but he was quickly resuscitated and rushed to Marin General Hospital.

A little more than 24 hours later, he was back on his feet and on his way to the Tam softball field, where he was greeted by a thankful daughter and was able to show his appreciation for a man he would call his “guardian angel.”

“I can’t say what would have happened if he didn’t call,” he said, noting he had no memory of the event. “What I think is I might have just been lying there for hours.”

Turns out, the man had a pre-existing condition called atrial fibrillation.

He said he’d had more than a half-dozen racing-heart episodes over the past 10 years, but it always had gone away within a couple of hours.

Even on those days, the man was so unconcerned about his condition, he’d never missed a single day of work.

Until last Tuesday.

“It was unusual to wake up in the hospital with my family around me. I’d never been in the hospital as a patient before,” he claimed. “I’ve got to admit, I wasn’t the best patient.”

Wills presumed his friend was having a stroke. He would know. Twice previously in his police-department duties, he’d been the first responder to a stroke victim.

He’s now 3-for-3 in having the victim live to shake his hand afterward.

“There are a lot of people in situations, for fear that they can’t help, won’t stop if they see a traffic accident,” Wills said. “I’m one that will do it. I’ve always done it, and I always do it.

“I want to help. That’s why I do the police thing for free. I want to make a difference. That’s why I do what I do. I’d do it again. It’s a great feeling.”

Perhaps the key moment in Wills’ heroics was his split-second decision to call the Mill Valley Police rather than 911, which would have landed him the Sonoma County dispatcher because he was calling from Petaluma.

“I was a tow truck driver in Mill Valley for 20 years. It (the Mill Valley Police Department) is in my memory bank of numbers I remember,” Wills explained. “I knew if I tried to find the number, it might take too long, because he was having all the symptoms of a stroke.”

In his training, Wills says he was told the brain can be severely damaged within 7-9 minutes of the start of an attack.

That’s why he was more impressed by the Mill Valley Police Department’s responses to his call than his own actions.

“From the time I hung up the phone (with the victim) to the time they dispatched, it was two minutes. Then they were there (at the man’s house) within 2-3 minutes,” he claimed. “That’s incredible.”

The man says he’s feeling great these days. That feeling was helped in part by Tam’s shockingly easy 12-3 win over Redwood last Thursday.

Equally important was his ability to be on hand for it.

“It certainly was a life-changing event, no question about it,” he promised.

“One, I was really fortunate I was talking to him (Wills). Two, I was fortunate that he had the presence of mind to call right away. I don’t know how other people would have acted. It was a fantastic thing.

“It was like a guardian angel kind of thing. He was the right person at the right time at the right place.”