2 credit Merrick couple with keeping them alive

Carl Ritter nearly died of a heart attack in May 2009 when he collapsed while playing soccer on the Baymen Soccer Club fields in Sayville.

Immediate attention with an automatic external defibrillator helped save his life. For that, Ritter, 46, of Hauppauge, credits Jill and Craig Levine of Merrick.

Their intertwined fates grew out of the death of the Levines' oldest son, Robbie, who collapsed in 2005 on a baseball field outside his Merrick elementary school. He was 9, struck down by sudden cardiac arrest.

"He's, I guess, living in me a little bit," Ritter said of Robbie earlier this week.

The Levines have no definitive cause of Robbie's death, but they believe a defibrillator could have saved his life. That belief became their special cause, to try to ensure that no one else dies when the presence of an AED could save them.

And that's how the Levines came to meet Ritter. The AED that shocked his heart into action was donated by the Levines through their Forever 9-The Robbie Levine Foundation.

After Ritter's collapse, two men and a woman performed CPR while someone else retrieved an AED. He was shocked six times, three times on the field and three in the ambulance.

"When we donate these, we kind of don't ever want them to be used," said Jill Levine, 41. "But when they are, that's great."

At the hospital, doctors discovered Ritter had clogged arteries and put in four stents. He gives thanks daily for the AED that saved his life.

"Every day since then I think of it more and more - how lucky I was," said Ritter, who works as a mason.

The Levines' activism is remarkable to this married father of three. "It's amazing - their loss and what they're doing and how they've impacted other people," Ritter said.

Since its founding in 2005, Forever 9 has donated about 200 defibrillators to schools, sports teams, athletic clubs and community councils locally and in other states. In 2007, at the Levines' urging, the State Legislature passed a law that said if a building is required to have an AED, there must be signs telling people where the devices are located, she said.

The Levines have been involved in other lifesaving events.

Craig Levine, an oral surgeon, has personally saved two people by using AEDs - a patient who passed out in his Bay Shore office in 2007 and a friend who collapsed in January during his twin sons' bar mitzvah.

"My son has kind of had something to do with three other people being saved," said Craig Levine.

Had it not been for their loss of Robbie, other families might be grieving today, and that is not lost on the Levines.

"You kind of wonder about fate and what your purpose is in the world," Craig Levine said. "You kind of wonder if your son's purpose was what happened after his passing."

Moriches resident Loretta, who asked that her last name not be used, will turn 80 next month. She credits Craig Levine for making that possible, for acting when she passed out in his waiting room.

"They said I fell off the chair and wasn't breathing," Loretta recalled. "He got the machine and saved my life.

"There's an old saying that when you save a life, you're just attached to that person. That's the kind of relationship I think we have."