Two deputies who attend Smoke Rise Baptist Church, Warrior, in North Jefferson Baptist Association received medals in October 2013 for their lifesaving measures during a medical crisis.
Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale awarded the Sheriff’s Life Saving Medal to deputies Jeff Mulkin and Jason Orr.
In July 2013, the two deputies were traveling along Interstate 65 in the jurisdiction of Fultondale, when they came upon a traffic jam resulting from an accident. Though the two men were off duty, they were in Orr’s assigned vehicle on their way to an appointment.
As they sat in the halted traffic, a motorist approached them from behind and said there was a problem in another vehicle.
When Orr and Mulkin got to that vehicle, they found the driver unconscious and without a discernable heartbeat. The man’s wife was administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The deputies removed the driver from his vehicle and Mulkin recalls praying as he administered chest compressions on the man. Orr cleared a path for the ambulance. He also tended to the family, with the help of a minister who was stuck in traffic as well.
When the ambulance arrived, the 53-year-old Tennessee man, who had suffered a heart attack, had a pulse and was breathing on his own again, Orr said. Because traffic still was not moving, Orr and Mulkin escorted the ambulance to the nearest exit, the deputies said.
“The Good Lord put us there for a reason,” Mulkin observed.
Orr added, “It was a chain of events that led up to it.”
The men explained that the decision to take Orr’s assigned vehicle meant they were visible in traffic, causing a private citizen to approach them and alert them to the medical emergency. Also the traffic jam kept the vehicle of the ailing motorist from being in motion at the time of the man’s heart attack, thus avoiding an accident. In other words, the halt in traffic likely spared the man, his family and people in other vehicles.
“That traffic jam happened for a reason,” Orr said.
Mulkin is the son of the late Virgil Mulkin, a pastor for about 40 years. According to Jeff Mulkin, the last church where Virgil Mulkin served was Eastern Valley Baptist Church, Bessemer, in Bessemer Baptist Association.
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