Kevin Lozandier felt his life slipping away in the back of an ambulance on July 1.
“Please, God, I have so much more to do,” the 18-year-old Montbello High School graduate prayed as the ambulance sped away from the practice field where he was working out.
He had cheated death once minutes earlier, when two coaches brought him back from near-death. And it would eventually take an electric shock, emergency-room heroics and four hours of heart surgery at University of Colorado Hospital to save the life of one of the brightest lights his school has known.
Lozandier will enroll next month at Michigan State, with four academic scholarships to study computer design and writing. He planned to try out for the Spartans’ football team.
When he sat down on the turf in the 90-degree heat, Gayland Allen, his track and football coach, thought little of it. Lozandier often drives himself to complete exhaustion, Allen said.
Track director John Trahan joked to Allen, “Oh boy, Kevin’s overworked himself again.”
But when Denzel Williams, a tough and quiet cornerback, examined Lozandier, he screamed for help with such emotion that it brought adults at a full run.
Lozandier had turned face down on the turf. He was ashen and had no pulse.
“He was dead,” Allen recalled.
Volunteer track coach LaQuida Joseph, a medical technician at Rose Medical Center, straddled his chest and pounded in CPR rhythm. Allen pried open Lozandier’s clenched jaw and gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Thoughts raced in Allen’s panicked mind. He thought about how he wasn’t there when his 8-year-old daughter drowned in a swimming pool five years ago.
Between puffs of breath into Lozandier’s lungs, Allen whispered to the unconscious athlete he loves like a son, “No. No. No. You’re not going out like this.”
Shaine McGee, 17, pleaded for Lozandier’s life in silent prayer. “Lord, don’t let him die. He’s got a future. He never gives up. He’s a good person. He’s a role model,” McGee recalled Thursday.
Dr. Ben Honigman, the head of emergency medicine at the medical school, was on duty when Lozandier arrived at University Hospital.
At five junctures, from the practice field turf to the operating room, Lozandier easily could have died. Most certainly, if not for Allen and Joseph, “he wouldn’t have made it,” Honigman said.
Doctors found a serious birth defect in Lozandier’s heart.
“The left coronary artery opened into the aorta in the wrong position,” said Brett Reece, a fellow in cardiothoracic surgery, who assisted in the operation.
The bad placement created pressure and cut off some of the blood supply to the heart. The surgery moved the opening to a normal position.
Lozandier walked back on the practice field Thursday and said he hopes to try out for the football team next year. If the Spartans won’t clear him to play? “I’ve always thought of myself as a student first and an athlete second,” he said with a confident smile.
He has beaten the odds before.
Lozandier home life was tough. He spent time in a foster home and, at one point, rode a city bus to school from a homeless shelter across the city.
He gave a speech at graduation. He told his classmates, “Never give up. Let no man control your destiny.”
He avoided gangs by surrounding himself with good people and staying busy with school, sports and mentoring.
“There’s no such thing as a self-made individual,” he said. “You do as much as you can, but you can’t do it all by yourself.”
Lozandier had lived an isolated life in a Haitian immigrant family, he said. He blossomed at Montbello High, partly because of sports but mostly because of Darlene Sampson, the school’s social worker, he said.
“She’s been like a mother to me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her,” he said of his academic success.
Sampson sees it differently.
“He inspires me,” she said.
When Lozandier emerged from sedation, his hospital room had been filled with the weary smiles of teachers and coaches.
“We look out for Kevin,” Sampson said. “We’re his family, but it’s not a one-way street. Kevin gives back a lot.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
