Pa. state senator and Bridgeville man help FedEx driver after collapse

For Mark Macala, the past two days have been a whirlwind of emotions.

He was working from his Bridgeville home Thursday and in the middle of a lunch meeting when his doorbell rang. It was FedEx with a large shipment he had ordered, but he wasn’t expecting it until next week.

“I was planning to track that shipment so I could be home when it came here,” he said, “so I was kind of surprised when I saw the boxes.”

The FedEx delivery man was putting the boxes on his front porch when Macala, 45, opened his front door.

Macala doesn’t usually work from home — he just happened to be there that day because of a contractor who was scheduled to come give pricing on work. He said he asked the driver if he needed help with the boxes and how many there would be.

Before he got a chance to answer, the FedEx delivery man collapsed on the sidewalk in front of Macala’s house.

“He collapsed like a ton of bricks,” Macala said. “It’s not like he tripped and stumbled — he just went dark and was down.”

By the abrupt way the delivery man had fallen, Macala said he knew the situation was serious. He pulled out his phone and dialed 911.

“He was not responding; he was not breathing,” Macala said. “I was doing my best to just get ahold of emergency personnel and do what I could.”

Coincidentally, across the street, state Sen. Devlin Robinson (R-Bridgeville) had just arrived home with the intent of changing clothes for the rest of his work day.

Robinson said he heard his neighbor talking across the street but didn’t realize what was going on until he walked up to his door and was able to get a better vantage point.

“I saw (Macala) was kind of crouched over a person laying on the ground,” said Robinson, 41. “I just dropped everything and ran across the street.”

Robinson was able to help the FedEx worker take a few breaths by putting him on his back and tilting his head back to open his airways. Robinson said he felt a faint pulse.

“Thank the lord (Robinson came over),” Macala said. “He was able to help the guy get some breaths; they were very dramatic, labored breaths.”

The 911 dispatcher told the pair to start chest compressions, which Macala did while Robinson called the local police chief.

First responders took over when they arrived, and the FedEx driver was taken by ambulance to St. Clair Hospital’s intensive care unit in Mt. Lebanon.

As of Friday night, he was still in the ICU but his status headed in the right direction, the neighbors said.

“It’s still a long road — he’s not out of the woods,” Robinson said. “We got him to the place he needed to go, and hopefully, he will be OK.”

In a statement, FedEx expressed thanks to Macala and Robinson for their quick action in coming to the team member’s aid. They did not identify the man.

“Our thoughts are with our team member as he recovers from this incident,” the statement said.

The whole event was “crazy,” Macala said. It probably only lasted about 10 minutes. But, it’s been on his mind for longer.

“It was a lot,” he said. “It was like fate — a miracle — I don’t know what to call it.”

Robinson was a lifeguard 25 years ago, and he’s a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, so he said he’s previously performed CPR and first aid.

However, he said he’s never seen anything like this situation, which was random and in broad daylight, all of a sudden.

“I think everybody should take a class,” he said, referencing first aid training. “It’s a good idea to just kind of learn.”

Conversely, Macala said he’d never been in a situation like that, and it was outside of his comfort zone. He said the experience made him realize he wants to be more prepared moving forward.

“There’s nothing to prepare you for that,” he said. “I definitely think I could’ve done more. But at the same time, I’m glad that I did what I did, and that’s sort of the message — the worst thing you can do is not help.”