HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – When paramedic Trevor Fujisaka of Honolulu EMS showed up for work last August, he had no idea he would be saving a life that day.

Dustin Kealoha, 17, had been swimming on the Kamehameha Schools Campus when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest.

Fujisaka says an AED — or automated external defibrillator — and CPR had been used on Dustin before he got there.

“There was definitely a lot more pressure, but deep down there are a lot of emotions going through my head because I don’t want to see a young person pass away,” Fujisaka recalled.

What Fujisaka didn’t know then, was that Dustin’s twin sister Tehani had died just three months before under similar circumstances.

Neither Dustin nor Tehani had any known medical conditions at the time, and both had been swimming when they went into cardiac arrest.

Tehani didn’t make it and for Dustin it was touch-and-go.

“After we got his heart back at the pool, I still had to give him an airway and then when we got him, we were just leaving the school, we had lost the pulse again and we restarted CPR,” Fujisaka said.

The twins’ mother Jamie Kealoha says she believes it was Fujisaka who made the difference and never gave up until Dustin was stabilized.

“There’s no words for what he’s given us, especially after losing our daughter, like you’re never prepared to lose a child and then almost lose a second one… we can’t thank him enough,” Jamie said while she broke into tears.

Now a little more than a year has passed. Dustin just started college at Dartmouth University.

“I told him at dinner I told him, you know, he better stay, he should stay in school, pursue his dreams and pursue his passions and never give up on any of those,” Trevor said.

“He’s given him a second chance to pursue his dreams, you know?” Jamie said.

An extraordinary gift that Fujisaka says he returns because when he was in second grade, he remembers paramedics helping his own father and that helped inspire the then 7-year-old to pursue the field today.

“The why I started doing it and I think all healthcare professionals have it why they came into this area,” he said. “So back to that day when my dad passed out, it gave me that hope and it’s fulfilled now knowing that I could give a mother hope, and a family hope that their child would be okay and we’re doing our best to to help them.”

And to save Dustin’s life, paramedic Trevor Fujisaka is their medical hero.

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