MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio — Many people have hit the snooze button one too many times, leading to a late start to the morning and workday. But when one Costco employee in Mayfield Heights didn't show up to his 5 a.m. shift last Thursday, his coworkers knew that just wasn’t like him.
They gave him a call, and were greeted by an odd response on the other end of the line.
"All they heard was moaning and slurring, and then the phone went dead," Dave Mackin, an assistant manager at the Mayfield Heights Costco, recalls.
However, Mackin said the employee called back, which he took as a sign that the employee was trying to tell them something.
"It became obvious that something was wrong," Mackin explained, "and he needed immediate help."
Mackin says he and the other three employees who were on the phone with him began working together to get him help, looking for his address so they could call 911 and finding his emergency contacts. However, that proved to be a challenge, as Mackin says the address listed on the employee's file was out of date and the employee wasn't able to verbalize where he lived. Luckily, he was able to text his address to a colleague.
"Our employees were able to quickly react and get him the help," Mackin said. "We remained on the phone with him while the EMT was responding, and we heard [an] EMT come into his house on the phone and we knew that he was in good hands then."
The employee's coworkers are choosing not to name him for privacy reasons as he recovers. They tell 3News he was taken to the hospital to be treated for a stroke, but has since been discharged and is recovering, regaining his speech and motor skills.
"He's a real health conscious guy — works out all the time, gave me plenty of tips on working out and dieting, food, and so forth — so it just caught me off guard," Avery Mullins, who’s worked alongside the employee for more than a decade, stated. "Of all the people that I know, that one caught me off guard."
Mullins says the worker is a younger man with kids, and describes him as someone who’s "easy to get along with" and a "good guy." The day after this all happened, Mullins tells us he went to visit his colleague.
This situation serves as a reminder to check in on those around you and care for one another, according to the Costco team.
"It reassures you, because that's the way that it should be. It should be that we look out for each other because you spend so much time here, and with the hours that we work in the mornings sometimes, your family isn't up and about — most people aren't, most people are asleep," Mullins said. "We kind of have to look out for each other to make sure that we're OK and go from there, and it just reassures me to know it was in action."
Mackin describes the Costco team as like a family that often spends more time with each other during the busy holiday season than their own families at home. He and Mullins sent well wishes to their colleague as he recovers.
"In this type of world, never ignore when somebody's not here," Mackin said. "Find out what's going on. It could be a bad situation."