SHARON, HERMITAGE

Moonlighting fireman saves a life at Lowe’s

At about 2 p.m. Tuesday, Unrue -- who works in the plumbing department at Lowe’s in Hermitage on top of his day job for the city -- said he saw people running to the home improvement store’s outdoor lawn and garden center.

Unrue followed to find out what was happening and saw a man lying on his side.

Charles Semenick, 72, of Sandy Lake, had just had a heart attack. Nobody was sure what had happened and they were waiting for an ambulance, Unrue said.

Unrue, trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, rolled Semenick over and saw the man’s face was "plum purple." Unrue said Semenick was not breathing, had no pulse and his eyes were open.

"He was dead," Unrue said.

Unrue said he began to perform CPR on Semenick.

Others joined in the rescue effort. After a couple of cycles, Lee Delpiero, a zone manager at Lowe’s, began doing chest compressions as Unrue continued doing mouth to mouth resuscitation on Semenick.

The turning point came when Cpl. John Piatek of the Hermitage Police Department, arrived with a defibrillator.

Unrue and Piatek hooked Semenick up to the defibrillator. He said after a patient is hooked up to the machine, it performs a quick diagnosis which tells the operator whether or not to shock the patient. Unrue said they were given a message to shock Se-