ATU 714 Member Chris Varian Helps Save Overdose Victim’s Life

It was a little after noon on December 8 when ATU 714 member Chris Varian noticed there was something wrong at the back of his bus. Up to that point, it had been a typical day. It was the last round on the inbound bus for the drug treatment clinic and he had just picked up a number of patients there.

“I recognized these folks as regulars,” he recalled. “I always treat all my riders as if they were friends so on their bad days they don’t treat me like crap.”

For the past decade, Varian has been a transit driver for Greater Portland Metro and served two combat tours in Iraq before that. As a veteran who experienced psychological trauma from his service overseas, Varian says he is often hyper vigilant about what’s happening around him. As he was stopped at West Gate on outer Congress Street and Stevens Avenue waiting for a large family to board, he noticed that one of the men from the clinic was pacing around nervously.

“I’m kind of watching him as I’m getting this family on and he walks straight to the front of the bus and kind of pushes past this passenger,” Varian recalled. “After they finally got their fares straight, he says, ‘there’s someone overdosing on the back of the bus. I don’t know what to do.’”

Although transit rules state that drivers should stay put and call it in when there’s an emergency, Varian immediately unbuckled his seat belt and rushed to the back of the bus. There he found a man collapsed unconscious with his lips turned a dark blue.

“I was like “ok, shit. Let’s go,’” Varian said. “I had learned CPR in the military and administered it both while deployed overseas and on the civilian side so I knew I could help that way.”

After calling in the emergency to dispatch, he went to the back of the bus, lifted the man’s head and began administering chest compressions. It was clear that blood was not getting to the man’s extremities as his lips were still blue, so Varian kept pumping and pumping.

“When this guy got on the bus, he was talking to me normally so I knew immediately that someone had given him something while on the bus, which was likely fentanyl because he wouldn’t just go down and out like that within minutes,” said Varian. “I wasn’t able to give mouth-to-mouth because I was concerned about getting exposed to fentanyl and I didn’t think I had a breathing apparatus for him.”

After pumping and pumping on the roughly 240-pound man, Varian became exhausted and instructed one of man’s friends to do take over while he went back to the front of the bus to check in with the dispatcher. Varian learned that the emergency medical crew was on the way, so he went back to the unconscious man. It was then he learned that one of the man’s friends had administered the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone to him. As he continued to do CPR on the man, he noticed some faint color came back to his bottom lip. But it suddenly started turning blue again, so he sprinkled some cold water on the man’s forehead and continued the chest compressions. Suddenly, the naloxone began to take effect.

“He finally started to spit up on me, his eyes came back and immediately his color came back. It was awesome,” said Varian. “Taking a life is one thing, but bringing someone back from the depths is pretty intense. It’s a different feeling, it truly is.”

Soon the paramedics arrived and Varian was sent home with full pay for the rest of the day. The next day, someone asked him, “Do you think you did the right thing?” Perplexed by the question, Varian replied, "Yeah, because I wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing and then go home and think for the next 30, 40, 50 years, that I should have done something. I would have rather gotten fired than know I had the tools and capability to do something and not have done it.”

Since that day, the man Varian helped save has returned to riding the bus. He doesn’t remember anything about the incident that nearly claimed his life, but he thanked Varian for helping him. Varian says he is now putting together an emergency CPR kit with a breathing apparatus because overdoses are happening so frequently these days.

“Working together for ten years with somebody, you learn a lot about that person’s character. I wasn’t surprised when I found out it was Chris who saved a life on a Metro Bus while on duty December 8th,” said ATU 714 President Joe Thomas. “That’s who Chris is. His heroics as a former Marine in Iraq came to use that day. He would have done it for anyone. I speak for everyone at ATU 714 calling Brother Varian a hero. We couldn’t be more proud of him.”

But Varian says he hates the word “hero” and doesn’t consider himself one.

“The heroes are the ones who survive losing their limbs or part of their brain and still fight to continue to live,” he said. “I just did CPR on this guy.”