It was an incredible confluence of circumstances that kept Basenese alive.
Basenese now heads energy company Demeter Systems in Florida, but he and his wife previously lived in Newport about a decade ago. The couple began staying in the Trovare subdivision on June 26 but hadn't met many of the other tenants.
On July 6, Laura was supposed to work out with a friend, Newport Beach resident Eila Ulyett, who canceled because her niece was visiting.
So instead, Laura and Lou took an evening walk down Newport Coast Drive.
"We came back up the hill and we were just around the corner of the driveway," Laura Basenese said in an interview at her condo Tuesday. "He was right in the middle of a word and fell backward with a seizure."
She started to scream, then realized people needed to know what the problem was. So she shouted for someone to call 911 because her husband was having a heart attack.
"Someone" turned out to be Peter Algazi, an executive recruiter who also lives in the Trovare neighborhood. He called for paramedics as other neighbors came to Laura's aid.
Geoff Dunlevie was watching TV with his daughter and got up for a glass of milk when he heard the cries for help. He knew CPR ? though his last training was 18 years ago ? so he ran out to offer help. Another neighbor, Megan Bright, had been performing CPR but wasn't strong enough to compress Basenese's chest. Dunlevie took over.
"You were so cold," Dunlevie told Lou Basenese when they met for the first time Tuesday. "I thought you were dead, so I told my daughter, why don't you go back inside."
Dunlevie has never had to perform CPR in a life-threatening situation, he said.
"At that point I thought to myself, I'm either going to be a bystander or I'm going to help," he said. "I started trying to find a pulse ? and I thought, I don't want this guy to die."
He didn't ? though Lou Basenese was clinically dead for a moment.
