For most of 17 seconds, Adam Quilty looks like a star.

He has never been much of an athlete. But this slice of videotape displays Adam's most glorious athletic moment -- a darting sprint past three defenders in a lacrosse game for Charlotte's Vance High.

Then the videotape shows a lot more. Too much more, really. It scares everyone who sees it.

Adam is 17 years old when those momentous 17 seconds begin. He is racing toward the goal.

When they end, Adam has collapsed to the ground. Untouched.

His heart has stopped.

That's where we start.

This skinny teenager is a student. A son. A teammate. A brother. Adam dreams of college. He has a crush on a girl named Ashley in his social studies class.

Adam is playing lacrosse not because he's good at it, but because he loves it. On this night -- March 31, 2000 -- Adam and his Vance teammates have traveled to Greensboro to play Southeast Guilford High.

It is 9:30 p.m. Vance has been getting creamed for most of the game, which is no real surprise.

Vance's lacrosse team is a club team. The parents pay for everything. The team's coaches do great volunteer work to keep the squad going, but it's an uphill fight. The kids can't earn a letter jacket. They rarely get to practice on the Vance campus.

Southeast Guilford has a real varsity team with far more experience. Vance is losing 12-3 with less than three minutes to play.

Adam doesn't play much unless Vance is way ahead or way behind. In three years as a midfielder, he has never scored a goal.

At 5 feet 6 and 110 pounds, Adam's legs wouldn't look out of place on a flamingo. The junior is easily Vance's smallest player.

But his teammates respect Adam, and his coaches love him.

Watch No. 19, the coaches tell new Vance players. That's what we want. That's the kind of desire you need.

Adam never gets sick. He never misses practice. He is one of the few players on the team who actually enjoys the practices as much as the games.

Like more than 99 percent of the teenagers who participate in high school sports, Adam will never be a pro athlete.

But Adam's future gleams. He is one of five National Merit Scholarship finalists in Vance's junior class. He ranks in the top 5 percent of his class academically. He is funny, self-deprecating and thoughtful. At his bar mitzvah, the rabbi told everyone Adam might grow up to be president.

Lacrosse, however, has given Adam things academics never has. A team. Camaraderie. Invitations to cool parties he never would have known about otherwise.

Adam is also well-known on the lacrosse team for his ability to take a huge hit. Lacrosse is a contact sport that includes elements of soccer, field hockey and football. It is legal for players to whack each other with long, netted sticks while trying to dislodge the ball.

When involved in a big collision, Adam always flies backward and lands in a heap -- a skill he learned in seven years of karate classes. This invariably draws a penalty on the other, larger player. Then Adam gets up, unhurt, and keeps playing.

No one can fall like Adam. That's what everyone says.

A heart in full

Something else big is happening in Adam's life on March 31, 2000. The heart that is about to betray him? It feels more whole than it has ever been.There's this girl. Her name is Ashley Lusk. Blonde hair. Quick wit. Smart, too -- also a National Merit Scholarship finalist at Vance.

She and Adam have been flirting for awhile, but lately it has turned more serious. Adam has this idea -- this extraordinary, amazing idea -- that he's about to have a real girlfriend. He and Ashley haven't gone on an actual date yet, but he has been working up the courage to ask her.

In class, hours before the lacrosse game, Ashley takes a ballpoint pen and scribbles on Adam's left hand.

"I (heart)Ashley," it reads.

Adam tells her goodbye and leaves the note on his hand for the game.

He rides the 90 miles to Greensboro with his father, Ken Quilty, and a couple of teammates. His mother, Dena Shenk, an anthropology professor at UNC Charlotte, will miss this game. She is attending an academic conference in Raleigh. His younger sister, Shayna, is staying overnight at a friend's house in Charlotte.

In the first half, Adam barely plays. His favorite trick -- standing next to the coach in hopes he will be seen first and get in faster -- isn't working.

In the second half, though, coach Chris Dryden and his assistant, Todd Kelly, start using Adam and the other reserves more often.

With 2 minutes, 30 seconds left in the game, Adam goes in. He immediately snares a difficult pass on the left sideline.

The 17 seconds begin.

`Somebody's down!'

About 20 Vance parents are sprinkled through the bleachers at Southeast Guilford's football stadium, watching the lacrosse game. Greg Carr is there, just like always.

Carr, a Charlotte-area homebuilder and the father of standout Vance player Gregory Carr, is videotaping the game. Carr tapes everything. He has every lacrosse game and every wrestling match his son has ever competed in on tape.

So Carr has his video camera mounted on a tripod as usual that night, following the action, when Adam catches the pass and starts to run.

Adam sprints right past one opponent. Then another. And another.

This is Adam's fantasy. He might actually score.

Still more defenders close in. Twenty yards from the goal, Adam flips a shot toward the net.

But a defender partially blocks the shot. Vance loses possession. Adam doesn't even get to draw one of his trademark penalties -- he barely gets bumped.

Adam turns and starts running downfield to play defense. The Carrs' video camera records his progress.

Almost to midfield, Adam begins running slower. And slower. No one is within 10 yards of him.

Other players flash by, as if in a parallel universe -- one that moves much faster.

Adam doesn't fall so much as he collapses. Face-first. His hands never get down to absorb the impact.

"Oh my God! Somebody's down. Oh my God! He just fell down!" The panicked voice of Nancy Putnam, a teenage girlfriend of one of the other Vance players, is captured on the Carr video.

In that 17-second span noted by the videotape timer, Adam has gone from the best chance he will ever have to score a lacrosse goal to sudden cardiac arrest.

Hope in black and white

Two officials, dressed in traditional black-and-white striped shirts, work most high-school lacrosse games. One of them, Chuck Frederick, is calling only the fifth lacrosse game of his life.Frederick, 46, is a doctor -- the chief of anesthesia at the Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro. But no one on the field knows that except the other referee, a more experienced official. He tells Frederick to stay on the far sideline so the coaches can't yell at him.

Frederick is finally starting to relax. He has done OK, he thinks. He watches Adam's shot go awry and starts jogging toward midfield, trailing the ball.

Adam is in Dr. Frederick's line of sight, 25 yards away, when Adam crumples. The doctor sees the fall and thinks to himself that it looks strange because Adam doesn't try to catch himself. Maybe it is an epileptic seizure, the doctor thinks -- he has seen that happen before, on a basketball court.

Frederick sprints to Adam's side, arriving first. It takes him seven seconds.

The doctor sees that Adam's lips are turning blue. Adam's eyes are open. His pupils are dilating.

Adam isn't breathing.

A lump forms in the doctor's throat. This isn't a seizure. It's worse. The doctor forgets to blow his whistle to stop play. He bends over and feels for a pulse.

No pulse.

Also at Adam's side within 15 seconds: Mark White, the Southeast Guilford head trainer, and Chris Dryden, head coach of the Vance team. Dryden doesn't always come out on the field for injuries, but he runs hard toward this one.

The other referee blows his whistle and stops play with 2:13 left in the game. Some players gather around Adam.

As a huddle forms around Adam, the doctor takes charge. The men turn Adam onto his back and take off his lacrosse helmet. The doctor reaches under Adam's neck and pulls up to give Adam a clear airway.

"What have you got?" the doctor asks the trainer.

White, who was North Carolina's athletic trainer of the year in 1999, doesn't know what to tell him.

"What do you mean?" White asks.

Frederick gets more specific. Does White know CPR?

Yes.

Can Dryden keep checking for a pulse?

Yes.

Can White get someone on the other end of his two-way radio to call "911"?

Yes.

Does White have anything other than basic trainer's equipment that might help save Adam's life?

No.

A father's nightmare

Ken Quilty, sitting in the bleachers, doesn't know his son is down. Ken is talking on his cellular phone with his wife of 22 years, Dena Shenk. She wants a live update on one of the few games of Adam's she has ever missed.

Then Ken notices the skinny legs sticking out of the huddle. A shiver of dread races down his spine.

"Someone's down," Ken says. "Hold on."

On the other end of the phone in Raleigh, Dena hears screaming. She thinks she hears somebody other than her husband say: "It's Williams." She mistakenly believes a Vance player named "Williams" must be the one hurt.

Vance assistant coach Kelly scrambles back from the huddle toward the sideline. "Mr. Quilty! Mr. Quilty!" Kelly yells.

Ken Quilty rises out of the bleachers, hangs up on his wife in midsentence and starts running toward his son.

The doctor feels again for a pulse in Adam's neck. Nothing. He gives Adam a couple of quick mouth-to-mouth breaths. Sometimes that works without having to go to full-fledged CPR, which occasionally breaks ribs.

Nothing.

This kid is dying right in front of me, the doctor thinks.

We've got to do CPR, Dr. Frederick tells White. You do the chest compressions. I'll do the breathing.

First, they must get to Adam's chest. They hurriedly slice up Adam's orange-and-blue No. 19 jersey -- the one so much a part of him that his e-mail address contains a "19."

`They're doing CPR'

White teaches cardiopulmonary resuscitation to high school students, but he has never done CPR on a real person.Frederick has. They quickly establish a rhythm -- five chest compressions for every breath.

After vaulting the chain-link fence surrounding the field, Ken Quilty joins the frantic huddle. The father takes his son's hand.

Adam's eyes are closed now. He is in ventricular fibrillation -- an abnormal heart rhythm in which uncoordinated, fluttering contractions of the heart's lower chambers occur. About 90 percent of the people who suffer VF outside a hospital will die.

Between breaths, Dr. Frederick glances at the tips of Adam's fingernails and his earlobes. Blue is bad. Pink is good. They are still blue.

All CPR can do is buy time before the rescue crews get there. And where is the ambulance, anyway?

On the videotape, fans say in hushed tones: "They're doing CPR."

Then the stadium is almost completely quiet.

The P.A. announcer pierces the silence. "The game is over. They've asked that we clear the stands, please."

The players gather in clumps on the sideline. Many pray. Greg Carr turns off his video camera.

The doctor is having doubts. It's been too long, he thinks to himself. No way the kid walks away clean from this. If he lives, he's going to have brain damage. I've got to think of something else to do.

Mark White, the trainer, is more optimistic. He's young, the trainer thinks. This kid won't die on my field.

Six minutes after Adam collapses, the doctor remembers something. He gets the school resource officer, Brad Whitley, to take over the CPR breathing for him. The doctor has a small medical bag of supplies in his car, including a syringe of adrenaline. It might help. He runs for it.

`Shock him!'

At 9:31 p.m., the first of six 911 calls from the Southeast Guilford football stadium registers at Guilford County Emergency Medical Services. Randy Kendrick, a communications supervisor at that 911 center in Greensboro, takes the call from Southeast Guilford athletics director Roy Turner. Kendrick gets a few details and sends everyone he can muster by 9:33 p.m.

Dr. Frederick hustles back and injects Adam with the shot of adrenaline. When a nurse who has come out of the stands guesses Adam might be cold, seven people pull off their jackets in unison and cover Adam's legs.

Dryden, the Vance coach, checks Adam's thigh, searching for a pulse in the femoral artery.

Nothing.

At 9:39 p.m., nine minutes after Adam collapses, Ryan Jones' siren punctures the night.

Jones is a paramedic, traveling alone on a yellow Guilford County medic truck. Jones' truck isn't equipped to transport patients, but it does have all sorts of quick-response medical equipment, including a heart defibrillator.

As Jones pulls onto the field, he sees a circle of about 20 people. People naturally huddle around someone who's hurt. Jones, 27, has seen countless huddles in his five years as a paramedic.

Jones gets a synopsis from Dr. Frederick, sets up his portable defibrillator and hooks a heart monitor to Adam.

There is a hesitation -- just for a second.

The doctor and the paramedic look at the monitor and then at each other, understanding more than anyone else what is happening.

Adam's heart is in electric chaos.

Adam has been without a pulse for at least 14 minutes. His heart isn't flat-lining, but it is quivering uncontrollably. Because his heart isn't pumping blood, his brain is being deprived of oxygen.

"Shock him!" Dr. Frederick says suddenly. "Shock him!"

Jones checks the defibrillator paddles.

"Clear!" Jones says.

The defibrillator shocks Adam, and the teenager's 110-pound body jolts upward.

The heart monitor shows that Adam's heart still isn't beating normally.

"Shock him again!" the doctor says.

Again, Jones uses the paddles. Again, Adam's body jumps.

The paddles leave burn marks on Adam's chest.

For more than a minute, the monitor looks better. Adam's heart almost breaks into a good rhythm. But then the rhythm becomes irregular and chaotic.

The defibrillator still hasn't worked.

Ken Quilty grabs Adam's hand once more.

His son is dying on a cool night, 90 miles from home, in the middle of a damp field, in a shredded lacrosse jersey, surrounded mostly by strangers.

"Come back to us, Adam," the father says, leaning close to his son's forehead. "Please come back to us."

Coming Monday In Part 2

The efforts to save the life of Adam Quilty, Charlotte's Vance High lacrosse player, continue as the ambulance arrives to rush him to the hospital.

On charlotte.com

Log on to see a video of Adam Quilty's collapse and the first rescue efforts.

Parents should be cautioned that the video could be disturbing to children.

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