BENTE 2419 members Jushawn Rucker and David DiPasquale. are driven by a love for their students and the district that shaped them. On December 20, Jushawn and David exhibited their passion for their work heroically when they saved a 15 year-old student’s life.
That day, Jushawn, a School Safety Officer (SS0), was assigned to work at his home school Wilson Foundation Academy, when his supervisor asked him to go to 33 school for the School of the Arts (SOTA) basketball game. Jushawn agreed and the game started as usual.
While Jushawn was screening attendees an SSO frantically ran up to him and told him something was wrong with a student on the court. Jushawn ran into the gym and saw that coaches had placed a student on his side in the recovery position with the reasonable assumption that the student was having a seizure.
David, an athletic trainer, could see the entire court from his position and heard a staff member say that a student fell down. David and Jushawn ran to help the student.
Both David and Jushawn checked the student’s pulse and found none. They started assessing the student by checking his airway, pulse, circulation, and arterial pulse. In a stroke of good fortune, just two weeks before, Jushawn had graduated from the MCC EMT program. “We have so many medical situations in my job, I decided to pursue EMT training on my own.” The student was in cardiac arrest and wasn’t breathing without a pulse. Jushawn immediately flipped him over and put him in the prone position.
Jushawn yelled “someone get me an AED right now!” David took over CPR compressions from Jushawn while he administered the AED. Jushawn turned the machine on and the AED displayed shock advise and subsequently delivered a shock, thereby restarting the heart immediately. Then David restarted CPR. The spectators in the gym sat eerily quiet as David and Jushawn continued to perform CPR and worked tirelessly to save the student’s life. “You could hear a pin drop.” says Jushawn.
Miraculously, the student started to regain consciousness. Jushawn asked him “can you hear me?” and the student moved his eyes in response.The fire department and EMTs showed up soon after and applied their own AED. The student started talking, bringing a sigh of relief to everyone in the gym. Once the student was alert and transported to the hospital, the spectators jumped off the stands, ran to David and Jushawn and hugged them profusely. They called David & Jushawn “superheroes.” The recovering student called Jushawn that night to thank him for saving his life.
Jushawn and David’s journey to this extraordinary day all started with their time at RCSD.
Jushawn became a SSO following in the footsteps of his role-model, his grandfather Ron Johnson. Ron retired from the school district after 30 years as an SSO and an active BENTE 2419 member and leader. Jushawn was a student at Wilson Foundation Academy, the same school where his grandfather worked. Jushawn jokes “I couldn’t get in trouble because my grandfather would find out about it if I did.” As a student, he always knew he wanted to work at RCSD and volunteered his time setting up equipment and helping out with school events.What motivates Jushawn to go to work every day is “keeping my babies safe.” Jushawn wears a lot of hats from “SSO to dad, counselor, teacher and uncle.” He says “I don’t believe in bad kids. I believe in misunderstood kids.” As a former RCSD student he understands what young people go through and wants to be someone students can “relate to, have an outlet with and be a role model to just like my grandfather was to me.” He wants to spend the rest of his career “being a benefit to every kid.”
David graduated from East High School and became an athletic trainer after his own harrowing medical experience. Years ago, David developed an abscess on his spinal cord that led to paralysis of his legs. Lacking health insurance, no therapeutic facility would provide services to him. He was a young man newly in a wheelchair with a family not sure what he was going to do next. Luckily, Highland Hospital allowed him to stay and he underwent months of physical therapy at the hospital. He miraculously was able to walk again and decided to honor his experience by going back to school.
After seeing the impact of physical movement in his own life, David decided to major in physical education and minor as an athletic trainer graduating from MCC and SUNY Brockport. After a very successful and exciting 18-year career with the Rochester Rhinos, he decided to get back to his roots and joined RCSD as an athletic trainer over a decade ago.
“I love our kids! I really do! I definitely have their respect” David says excitedly. When students are hungry, he brings them sandwiches and ensures they have eaten before practice. “One student asked, why do you do this for us? Nobody has ever done this for us.” “I love that they know I take care of them.”
Remarkably, December 20 was not the first time David saved a life. In 2001, an elderly person at the Greater Rochester International Airport got off an elevator, put his back against a wall and collapsed. “We didn’t have AED’s at the time” and so David performed CPR compressions and saved the man’s life. At the hospital, the man thanked David for saving his life and joked about his ribs hurting.
Jushawn and David both get emotional talking about the day they saved a young man’s life and describe feeling “joy and goosebumps” and say they will always carry with them “what could’ve have happened.” Both David and Jushawn believe that it was God who placed them both at School 33 that night just a few days before Christmas. Sometimes holiday miracles come in the form of unsung heroes whose love for their students and passion for their work leads them to act with courage and a lot of heart.
On January 25, RCSD Superintendent Carmine Peluso and the Board of Education honored Jushawn and David for their heroic efforts.
Update: On June 6, 2024 Jushawn & David were recognized with the United Way Labor Hometown Heroes Award.
