NEWS

City employee hailed as hero

Not all stories about heroes have a happy ending, but that does nothing to diminish the actions of Brad Beverly in the eyes of Korina Navarro. 

In late April, Navarro was hosting her friend, Pam, at her home in southeast Keizer. Navarro had invited Pam over to hang out after learning she wasn’t feeling well. Navarro’s concern grew as she saw Pam get off the bus near her home. 

“I noticed she was very winded. It sounded like she had been drinking, she was mumbling,” Navarro said. 

Navarro asked if she had been drinking, but Pam assured her she hadn’t. 

“She asked if I could get her a cup of coffee, so I went in to make that while she was out on the porch,” Navarro said. “While I was working on that, Pam was talking with someone on the phone. Then I looked out through the window to the porch and saw her slumped over.”

Navarro raced out of her house and grabbed Pam’s phone expecting to call 9-1-1, but it had returned to it’s locked state. Navarro went back in grabbed her phone and started dialing. The 9-1-1 dispatcher asked if Navarro could get Pam on the ground and begin CPR, but she was unable to lift Pam out of the chair. 

About two blocks away, Keizer Public Works employee Brad Beverly, a customer service representative, was taking a meter reading at a vacant house when he heard the call for help come in over his radio. 

“Our radios pick up a fire channel and I knew I wasn’t far away,” Beverly said. “I got in my truck and drove around the corner, that’s when I could hear Korina screaming for help. I couldn’t ignore it, and I just wanted to help.”

Beverly is a veteran of the Oregon National Guard with deployments in Iraq and Kuwait as well as rescue operations in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, but he said it was city-required CPR training that kicked into high gear. 

“You go through the training and see the videos and you wonder if you are going to remember it all. But it was amazing how instantaneous it was, it came back,” Beverly said. 

Beverly got Pam out of the chair and began doing compression-only CPR. 

“It felt like an eternity, but the fire district medics got there and were able to hook up their compression machine,” Beverly said. 

Between Beverly’s quick response and the Keizer Fire District crew, Pam was breathing again when she was loaded into the ambulance, Navarro said. 

Navarro followed Pam to Salem Hospital and remained with her until 2 a.m. the next morning when doctors told her she had no brain activity. 

“She was this awesome down-to-earth, bohemian, loving woman,” Navarro said. 

Pam passed away not long afterward. Navarro called Beverly a week after the event to let him know what happened and to thank him for his quick action. 

Beverly said he wouldn’t change a thing, despite the final outcome.  

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out, but I did what I could and I was happy to help. I would do it again,” he said.