Both scenes were surreal: Back in May 2019, David Leake, a road truck mechanic at Memphis Light, Gas and Water, was getting ready to take his nightly jog at the old Hernando High School football field in Hernando, Mississippi, when he saw a man lying on the ground, struggling to breathe. In December, Dwight “Dee” Alexander, an MLGW transportation foreman, was about to drive away from a convenience store in Memphis, Tennessee, when he glanced to his left and saw a man collapse in the doorway.
Both say that it’s the safety training at MLGW that helped them act quickly and help save the two men’s lives.
“I was just glad I was at the right place at the right time,” said Leake, who’d just taken a CPR refresher two weeks earlier. “It was kind of scary, but I didn’t have time to be scared. Nobody else was there, and I had to react.”
“We talk about safety on a daily basis,” added Alexander. “They constantly say, ‘We want you to go home just the way you came,’ so just having that preached to us on a daily basis helped us a lot. If we weren’t in that type of culture every day, I don’t think we would’ve reacted the same.”
Leake performed two sets of chest compressions, keeping the man breathing and conscious until first responders arrived. Alexander also had to do CPR twice before the man’s pulse returned.
Both men were recognized with Division’s Hero Awards by MLGW’s Board of Commissioners for their lifesaving actions.
“At Memphis Light, Gas and Water, safety is always at the forefront. Especially within our Transportation Department, they have a mindset of fixing things,” said MLGW Director of Corporate Safety Chandrika Winston. “In addition to CPR training for all new hires, every employee attends a CPR refresher course annually. I believe it’s more than training; our people have the desire to help whenever they can. They’re not going to run when someone’s in trouble.”