Thirty-two-year-old Massachusetts inmate Dennis Dicato is just a month away from finishing up doing time for larceny — but now his life in defined by much more than that.
On Monday, Dicato, four other Essex County inmates and their corrections officer, Sgt. Dennis Laubner, had a hand in saving a man's life.
"I'm just glad to be able to change the direction of the karma in my life because it was going the wrong way for a long time," Dicato said.
Laubner said he and the inmates had just finished up a work detail picking up trash along the 114 onramp to 495 North when the victim's girlfriend pulled up asking for help.
"She exits the vehicle and I know there's a problem. She's got a cell phone, she's frantic and I remember her saying 'Help me, my boyfriend's dying, he just overdosed!'" Laubner said.
As someone who has used heroin before and had witnessed friends overdosing on it, Dicato jumped into action.
"I seen him slumped over in the car, proceeded to open the door, take him out, lay him down on he ground, the other guys helped me take him out, put him down, and tipped his head back, proceeded to give him rescue breathing," Dicato said.
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Laubner began sternum rubs as they tried to keep the 22-year-old man, known to them only as Carlos, breathing until rescue personnel could get there with Narcan.
"It wasn't sergeant, inmate, drug addict," said Sgt. Laubner. "It was human being, human being, trying to save another human being."
For Laubner, the encounter hit close to home: Last June, he found his 30-year-old son Christopher dead of a heroin overdose in his bedroom.
"I was thinking something made that girl — she saw the blue lights — and I find comfort and solace thinking... maybe that's Chris' way of saving somebody that shouldn't have died at that time," Laubner said.
