This Allentown cop champions AEDs on the job. Now one has helped save his life

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — An Allentown police officer’s yearslong mission to put defibrillators in more police vehicles may have saved his life after he collapsed June 10 during a chase.

Sgt. Chris Hendricks suffered sudden cardiac arrest as he ran after a man about 12:45 p.m. that day in the 600 block of North Ninth Street.

Paramedics reached the scene within minutes and performed CPR on Hendricks.

They also shocked his heart with a defibrillator before taking him to a local hospital, according to his friend, Rachel Moyer, who visited Hendricks a few days later.

Hendricks is sore after hitting his head when he fell, but he’s “doing well,” Moyer told LehighValleyNews.com.

He remembers “most” of what happened, including “not feeling well” just before collapsing, she said.

Moyer, who runs the Gregory W. Moyer Defibrillator Fund, said Allentown paramedics used an AED — automatic external defibrillator — from an ambulance to save Hendricks.

But an AED in Hendricks’ squad car, and fellow officers he’s helped train to use them, were there to save his life if paramedics didn’t reach him as quickly as they did, Moyer said.

Hendricks, a former EMT, has worked for about five years to equip more Allentown police vehicles with defibrillators, Moyer said.

“He was [saved by his own work] — 100 percent,” Moyer said.

Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk thanked officers and paramedics for their quick response after visiting Hendricks in the hospital that night.

'We made a vow'

Moyer and her husband launched the Gregory W. Moyer Defibrillator Fund more than two decades after their son suffered sudden cardiac arrest during halftime of his first varsity basketball game.

Moyer said she was sitting in the stands when one of Greg’s teammates ran out of the locker room and said her son needed help.

Several nurses in the crowd eventually started CPR after learning of Greg’s condition, but it took more than 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, Moyer said.

But that ambulance was not equipped with a defibrillator.

A second ambulance arrived 12 minutes later, and paramedics restarted Greg’s heart on the way to the hospital.

But Moyer said she feared the worst when she saw those paramedics crying as she and her husband walked into the hospital.

Greg Moyer died Dec. 2, 2000, from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Doctors told Moyer and her husband that Greg likely could have been saved if his heart was restarted sooner.

“We made a vow that night that we would not put a headstone on his grave until there was an AED in every school in this country,” she said.

Moyer thought it would take her a few years to show everyone the importance of easy access to defibrillators by sharing Greg’s story.

'Heartbreaking' lack of progress

But more than two decades after launching the Greg Moyer Fund, she’s “frustrated” that defibrillators are not yet in all schools, police vehicles and public places, such as fields and parks.

Moyer said she’s worked with various lawmakers over the past two decades to try to push through heightened requirements for defibrillators in public schools.

State Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-Monroe/Waynes, is sponsoring the latest version of that proposed legislation — Senate Bill 375, also known as Greg Moyer’s Law — which would require each school district to provide AEDs for all interscholastic athletic events and train employees to use them.

It also would require schools to develop a detailed emergency plan to follow in case of a sudden cardiac arrest.

“No AED, No game, No practice,” Brown wrote in a legislative memo to her colleagues.

“Currently, our schools have the ability to implement these life-saving measures. However, unfortunately, they have not chosen to make this a priority.”

The bill was referred in February 2023 to the Senate Education Committee, where it remains.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Moyer said of the lack of progress on AED legislation in Pennsylvania since her son’s death.