Two from UPD Honored by SUNY for Life-Saving Rescue on Campus

ALBANY, N.Y. (Nov. 23, 2021) — Sara Buckley has no memory of collapsing to the pavement while jogging on University Drive near State Quad Parking Lot on the morning of Dec. 18, 2020. Nor does she recall two members of the University Police force saving her life.

After two days in a medically induced coma, the 26-year-old physician’s assistant awoke to find her parents at her bedside. She asked what had happened. “‘You were running and you collapsed,’ they said. ‘You went into cardiac arrest.’ I remember being appalled,” said the former cross country and track competitor at Guilderland High School and University of Hartford who’d jogged nearly every morning for years on the UAlbany campus.

“Who found me?” she asked her parents, and then heard of UPD Lieutenant Kevin Krosky and Officer Alex Jobson. “And my parents told me how excellent they were.”

“At 6:42 am we received a call for a female down on the roadway by State Quad lot,” said Krosky. “Officer Jobson and I were just starting our shifts and responded to the area. It was dark, wet, snowy, icy and 16 degrees.”

Jobson arrived first. “I found the female, laying down partially on the sidewalk and partially on a snowbank,” he said. First thinking she may have just “passed out,” he found he could not find a pulse on her wrist or carotid artery.

Krosky remembered, “I arrived and was grabbing a blanket from my car when Officer Jobson advised me that he believed she was in cardiac arrest.” Grabbing an automated external defibrillator (AED), he and Jobson performed CPR on Buckley for several minutes and then delivered 2 shocks on the AED prior to arrival of an EMS team from Mohawk Ambulance Service.

“We were able to get a faint pulse back and she was transported to Albany Med for further treatment,” said Krosky. Jobson, as the officer assigned to the call, went to the hospital to both find out the woman’s identity (Buckley carried no ID), “and to be there for her upon her family’s arrival. He spoke with the family, who identified the patient as their daughter.”

The action earned both men SUNY Police Life Saving Awards for actions over the past year. They were recognized at ceremonies in Saratoga Springs on Nov. 16. Also honored was Officer Adam Pasnik, with the SUNY Police Professional Service Award for his community engagement on and off campus — instrumental in generating positive dialogue between the public and UAlbany departments and students.

Buckley said she feels enormously fortunate. “Where I fell was the least isolated spot of my entire run, and it was the first time I wore a vest with a crisscross string of lights,” she said. “After three feet of snow the day before, I might have never been noticed.”

She felt fortunate as well, she said, “for your campus’s caring police. The funny thing is that I’d been caught in a bad thunderstorm a few months before and one of them drove me home!” A few weeks after getting out of the hospital, she dropped off cookies at UPD.

Jobson and Krosky kept in touch with Buckley’s family, getting updates on her condition. Her cardiologist, Dr. Neil Yager, called Krosky a few days after the incident “praising us and EMS on what a good job we did and, that Sara would not have survived if it wasn’t for our fast actions on the scene, as well as the EMS care she received in the field.”

“We were beyond pleased to find that Sara was able to recover and was home before Christmas day,” said Jobson. “It made a wonderful holiday gift.”

Jobson and Krosky, like all UPD officers and supervisors, are trained in CPR and AED. “Being a part of saving a young life is an incredible feeling,” said Krosky. “These are the types of things we train for, and this is the best part of our jobs.”

Jobson, who’s been a UPD patrol officer since 2018, said the incident “is one I will remember for the rest of my life.” He added that, beyond his aid in saving a life, “being able to speak to Sara’s family and her after she had recovered was also a blessing — and speaks to the reason why I wanted to become a police officer in the first place.”

“It’s amazing how quickly they could respond, and do so so selflessly,” said Buckley.