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Stroke victim stars in hero programme

1/10/2008

WHEN grandad David Milner didn’t arrive home at his usual time, his wife, Barbara, immediately knew something was seriously wrong.

Unable to contact him, her desperation increased as the hours ticked by.

Her instinct was right. The BT maintenance engineer, of Wilshaw Lane, Ashton, had suffered a stroke in his works van and was lying unconscious in the driver’s seat.

To make matters worse, he had been locked in a compound overnight after fellow staff — oblivious to his plight — clocked off and went home.

But it was the only due to the tenacity of Barbara, a quick-thinking neighbour, and fine detective work by his colleagues that he was traced. Their efforts saved his life.

A dramatisation of the events will be shown on BBC programme Accidental Heroes tonight (Thursday) at 8.30pm.

Barbara said: "I had an instinct something was seriously wrong.  The hours ticked by and it reached 8pm. I called the police who said they’d check the hospitals but they were reluctant to launch a search. It was so out of character, I had to do something."

Frantic with worry, she sought help from a neighbour who booted up the couple’s computer and managed to find his boss’s phone number. David’s manager, Jim Beckett, called colleagues Dave Platt, Carl Howcroft and Andy Makin and they began a hunt.

The problem was that David could have been working at any one of more than 30 BT buildings across Greater Manchester. They narrowed it down to a handful of likely locations and by midnight eventually tracked him down to Eccles where they raised the alarm.

Paramedics arrived in minutes, but he was close to death and needed a defibrillator to save him.

David, 59, said: "I’d have been dead by the morning – I had a matter of hours left.  The doctors said it could have happened anytime. I don’t even remember driving to Eccles but I must have gone on the motorway.  If I’d have suffered the stroke then, the consequences don’t bear thinking about."

He spent 16 days in hospital after the incident in September 2005 and is still fighting his way back to health today.

"But without the determination of my friends and family, I wouldn’t be here at all," he added.