The Greatest Save

That David Plotkin is alive today to tell the story of the day he died is thanks to quick-thinking bystanders, well-trained lifeguards and E.M.Ts, and the fact that he was in the right place when things went very wrong.

It was July 30, 2022, and Plotkin was riding a fat-tire bike on the beach, heading toward home in Beach Hampton when he collapsed just east of the Amagansett Beach Association (A.B.A.) area.

“If he had gone any further he would have been in that no-man’s land between Indian Wells and Atlantic,” John Ryan Jr., East Hampton Town’s chief lifeguard, said this spring, reflecting on rescues that have made the deepest impression on him.

Kim and Lou Terlizzi, their daughter Melissa Weitzel, and friends Laura Troccoli and Maryanne Berg were just setting up their beach gear when Kim and Melissa saw Plotkin go down. He “didn’t really fall,” Kim told The East Hampton Star a few weeks later. “He stopped, lowered himself to the ground, and then splayed out backwards, face towards the sky.” They quickly realized he was in trouble and rushed to him. Maryanne, a nurse, searched for a pulse and found none, and Lou, a retired Mount Kisco police officer, began performing CPR while Melissa ran to the lifeguard at the Amagansett Beach Association stand for help.

At the A.B.A. stand, Aidan McCormac sent two of his fellow guards, Luke Ferraro and Jack O’Sullivan, both 16 at the time, to relieve Terlizzi. He radioed to the town guards, “cardiac arrest, CPR in progress,” recounted Ryan, who heard the distress call over the radio from Atlantic Avenue Beach and took off with more guards.

Over at the town end of the beach, lifeguards were switching shifts on the Indian Wells stand when Charlie Goldsmith, a 19-year-old lieutenant, and lifeguard Anthony McGorisk noticed the commotion east of the A.B.A. stand. They hadn’t even heard the radio call, but they grabbed the automatic external defibrillator and raced to the scene. “We initially thought it was a fight on the beach,” Goldsmith said in April. Ironically, the day before, Goldsmith had been talking with a first-year guard about the importance of the A.E.D. “That is one of the biggest things that our chief, Johnny, and his father talk about when you’re 16 and you become a lifeguard. . . They said, ‘whatever happens, take the A.E.D. with you . . . because you might get there and you might need it.’ If they wouldn’t have said that, I don’t think I would have grabbed the A.E.D. that day.”

They put the defibrillator pads on Plotkin’s chest and shocked him in the hope of restarting his heart. When that failed, lifeguards continued CPR. “Every time it analyzed, we got another lifeguard in to do compressions,” Ryan said. “Charlie basically stayed on the A.E.D. the entire time, telling people to cycle in. He became the one in charge.”

“Everyone’s got their task: compressions, ventilations, connecting the A.E.D., running the A.E.D.,” Goldsmith said. “The guards were doing exactly what we’re trained to do when you see the rescuer that you’re working with is getting fatigued.”

Plotkin was placed on a backboard
and loaded into a Marine Patrol pickup to be taken to an ambulance that had
arrived at the Indian Wells parking lot, Goldsmith continued CPR in the back of the moving truck.

“Even loading him into the ambulace there was ‘no shock advised,’ ” Ryan said, using the phrase the robotic voice of the automatic defibrillator uses when it cannot detect a heart rhythm capable of being shocked back into regularity.

With the ambulance personnel in charge, the lifeguards could return to
their posts. They and Lou Terlizzi had together performed CPR on Plotkin for some 20 minutes, an eternity in emergency medical services.

“They actually declared me dead, which I didn’t realize,” Plotkin said in April, recounting what he had later learned of that day.

“Everybody left, figuring it was an unfortunate outcome,” said Ryan, who was prepared to make the point to the young lifeguards that even when they do everything right, such situations rarely end well. It is one of the hardest parts of the work.

It’s a cliché that would be overworked if it weren’t so true: The margin between life and death can come down to mere seconds,
and few know this as well as our first responders, seasoned lifeguards among them. There’s also luck, training, and maybe even a higher power at play in every rescue.

As Ryan watched the guards walk away, shaken and deflated, he heard
Tom Field, the town’s most senior CPR instructor and an advanced E.M.T., talking to Plotkin in the back of
the ambulance. They had detected a very weak pulse, “and he was breathing,” Ryan said. “You’re almost destroyed by it, and then to find out that he is alive. . . .”

No one knew what would ultimately happen, “but I had the ability to tell them that not only did they do their best, but that the gentleman was in the ambulance and breathing because of the effort that everyone put into this.”

To first responders, he was still a John Doe, carrying no identification at the time of his collapse, “so they had nobody to call,” Plotkin said. He had set out on the ride with a friend, but told her to go ahead of him and that he would return at his own pace. He had been scheduled to play golf at the East Hampton Golf Club but never showed up for his tee time. His wife, Annemarie Plotkin, found his car in the driveway, and knowing he had missed
the tee time, “called the hospital to see
if anyone was brought in that fit my description,” he said. The answer was “yes,” but “she would have to come and ID the body.” She drove to the hospital in shock, believing that her husband was dead, but found him instead “in a medically induced coma.”

“I have absolutely no memory of that day, or the five days before the bike ride,” he said. Nor does he remember anything from the six days he was in a coma. Friends told him that he had been singing “Sweet Caroline” — “my go-to for years” — at a Stephen Talkhouse karaoke night a few days before he collapsed. Then a few days later, when his brother was videotaping him coming out of the coma, “I came out singing ‘Sweet Caroline’.”

A healthy 49-year-old who ran, biked, did hot yoga and workout boot camps, Plotkin was unaware that his left anterior descending coronary artery “was over 90 percent blocked.” After waking up from his coma, he was transferred to Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he had surgery to place a stent in his main artery.

“World-renowned heart surgeons operated on me. My doctors are as good as
they get and they literally said, whoever administered CPR that day for the amount of time that they did — and it was a
collective effort between Terlizzi and the lifeguards — they did it perfectly because I really have no brain damage other
than maybe, some memory issues, but nothing that’s keeping me from doing anything day to day.”

“The fact that they knew CPR as well as they did and that they were able to administer it to perfection — and they’re teenagers — is just incredible,” Plotkin said. “Everyone, everyone at some point in their lives should go through a CPR class.”

Ryan and Goldsmith both credited Field — who, having trained thousands of people over the decades, is something of a legend in South Fork fire and E.M.S. circles — for the quality of their chest compressions. “He knows his stuff and he makes it engaging and he cares,” Goldsmith said of learning CPR under Field.

“Every day feels like a gift,” Plotkin said. He stopped drinking completely, “and I’m a lot lighter, both spiritually and physically, since giving up alcohol.” He continues to exercise and has been working with a wellness doctor who “helped me rebuild my strength and cognition through peptide therapy. For months
now, I’ve felt more energetic and sharper than I have in years. It’s a true second chance at life.”

“To this day, he calls me on his birthday, which is really . . . his new birthday,” Ryan said. “Every year he checks in with me. Once or twice or three times a year we meet up.”

“Whenever I’m out in the Hamptons I always give him a call and reconnect with him and the guys, and go over to the lifeguard dory barn and give the guys a hug and shake hands and let them know that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t count my blessings and thank God for them and that police officer. And I speak to him and his wife often as well.” Plotkin’s mother donated more A.E.D.s to the lifeguards.

“The fact that I died and came back is not only a blessing, it just makes me feel like I have a higher purpose,” Plotkin said. “Even though I have no recollection of that day, there’s no question that there was an incredible amount of energy around me.”

For Goldsmith, who has since become an E.M.T. and is looking to join the New York City Fire Department, that day in 2022 “is a reminder of what any day can turn into” for a lifeguard. “It was a calm, dead-flat day. There weren’t big waves or rip currents, and out of nowhere you get one of the biggest calls that you’re going to get. It’s really a reminder to not get complacent.” He graduated from Texas Christian University in the spring of 2025 and still works as a town guard, now a captain at South Edison Beach in Montauk. “It’s a hard job to quit,” he said.

Last summer he met Plotkin “for the second time” at his house in Amagansett, “but he was a little more talkative this time,” Goldsmith said. —