Islip lifeguards, others helped save man in cardiac arrest

Fire Island has been Kris Guccione’s “happy place” since she was a child growing up in Islip Town.

She expected to relive some of those fond memories with her two adult sons and her husband, Wally Smith, when they returned to Fire Island from the Midwest on a Friday last month for a weeklong trip, which was to end with her brother’s wedding.

But the vacation became “horrific and terrifying” that Sunday, Aug. 3, Guccione said, when Smith, 65, went into cardiac arrest and collapsed off the coast of Fair Harbor after wading into the surf with his sons.

“My son thought his father stepped on a shell — he made a face. He thought [Smith] reached down to get something out of his foot, and he never popped back up,” Guccione told Newsday. “ ... my husband was dead.”

Smith’s sons rushed him to shore, and a nearby group of vacationing nurses began giving him chest compressions. Soon after, Islip Town lifeguards Steven Hourigan and Mary Kaplan sprung off a nearby watchtower and rushed toward the shoreline.

“When we got there, we really lucked out,” said Hourigan, 34. “There were a lot of helping hands.”

Hourigan pumped air into Smith's lungs with a piece of equipment. Kaplan, 27, used a defibrillator on Smith at least six times after he flatlined.

The rescue marked the first time Kaplan had used shock paddles outside of training.

“We go through extensive training with all of this. … We’ve done it a thousand times. But on an actual human? No,” said Kaplan, one of nearly 300 Islip lifeguards responsible for everyone who visits the town's beaches and town-owned pools each year.

Hundreds of emergencies seen  

Islip lifeguards intervened in 367 emergencies on Fire Island during the 2025 beach season, which ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day, according to town figures. About 30 of those incidents occurred at Fair Harbor this year, while the vast majority occurred in Kismet. 

Kaplan and Hourigan eventually got Smith’s heart pumping. He was carried off the beach on a backboard, loaded into what Hourigan described as a "little ambulance," and transported by the Fair Harbor Fire Department to Saltaire.

From there, he was flown in a helicopter to Stony Brook University Hospital and cooled to 36 degrees to “preserve the organs,” Guccione said. 

Smith’s family was taken to the hospital by police. When they arrived, “his prognosis was grim,” according to Guccione, who said, “I had the priest on the line for his last rites.”

Doctors at Stony Brook put Smith’s chances of survival at just 6%, according to an Islip Town spokeswoman.

But Smith woke up on Monday morning, with his wife sitting next to him, exactly 15 hours after the initial 911 call. The pair left the hospital that Thursday afternoon. 

“It was great. Everyone was moving 100 miles an hour to check him. The first thing they did was check to see if he could move his arms,” she said. “I was terrified he was going to be paralyzed — he couldn’t feel his feet, and then he could feel his feet. It was a huge relief.”

Smith told Newsday he remembers going into the water, and then “all of a sudden I’m waking up in a hospital room.”

“I could not have told you how long I was unconscious,” he said. The 15 hours “could have been seconds.”

Aside from a cracked sternum and ribs from the rescue efforts, he is all but recovered.

Doctors installed what’s basically a small defibrillator in his chest, but it remains unclear what caused his cardiac arrest. Both Smith and his wife describe him as active, and he didn't have a heart blockage, both said.

Cardiac arrest is when the heart's "electrical system malfunctions," which causes the heart to beat abnormally or stop altogether, according to the American Heart Association. The survival rate is only about 9%.

These lifeguards teach, too

Hourigan, the lifeguard who gave Smith air, has worked as a lifeguard for about two decades, since age 15. Outside of beach season, he works as a middle school science teacher in the Central Islip school district.

Kaplan, who operated the shock paddles, is a physical education teacher in the Connetquot school district. She has a decade of lifeguard experience.

She said she and her crew get retrained through the Red Cross every year. 

“I feel like we’re so well trained through our department that our only focus was just making sure that we were doing our job right,” she said.

Kaplan called Smith's recovery "pretty unbelievable" because of the low survival rate for cardiac arrests. 

Guccione, who lives outside of Detroit with her husband, said the intervention of the lifeguards, vacationing nurses, first responders, hospital staff and everyone else who stepped up to save his life was the silver lining that prevented her childhood happy place from becoming a nightmare. 

“The positive things are that people were ready and willing and able to help,” Guccione said. “We were there because Fire Island is my favorite place, my happy place. … And I was afraid it wouldn’t be anymore.”

“You know what? It’s still my happy place,” she said, “because the outpouring of help and kindness is overwhelming.”