By Scott Morgan
When Joanne Ludwig casually asked one of her students, Nico Clarizio, how his job was going, the answer wasn’t what she expected.
“You wanna hear something interesting?” Clarizio replied to Ludwig, who is a business education teacher and coordinator of the Senior Experience program at Ewing High School.
He then told her how a week earlier he had helped save a coworker at the Trenton Country Club who had fallen from the rafters of a storage shed and landed back, shoulders and neck onto a concrete floor. The man ended up in the trauma ward, nearly paralyzed.
Clarizio, 17, being naturally humble and quiet, never mentioned the incident to his adviser.
When Ludwig’s jaw returned from gaping to closed, she immediately set to finding out the whole story and ended up getting Clarizio named as the EHS student of the month for his efforts to help save 64-year-old Steven Burkhalter’s life. Twice.
It was the early afternoon of Nov. 5. when Clarizio and Burkhalter, a Hopewell resident, had to get some holiday decorations out of the cart barn at the Trenton Country Club, where Clarizio typically works for Cammy Castiello, the club’s catering director, through the Senior Experience program.
Burkhalter, who’s worked for TCC for about 25 years, climbed into the rafters made of plywood and 2-by-6s. It was and is safely constructed, Burkhalter said.
“I remember coming down, I remember hitting,” Burkhalter said. Clarizio remembers seeing the impact.
“I was on the floor. I looked away for a second,” he said. “He landed on his upper back, he took the full force of the landing.”
Burkhalter didn’t feel a thing. “I jumped right up,” he said. “I must have been in shock.”
Burkhalter, it turned out, had timed his catastrophe well. Clarizio, you see, is a trained lifeguard who’s certified in first aid.
When Burkhalter stood up, he had blood pouring from his head, and spit up some blood, Clarizio said. The teen realized his workmate and friend was in a state of shock and disorientation and called in Jim Watson, a firefighter who runs the country club’s pro shop.
Clarizio and Watson kept Burkhalter calm and, most importantly, immobile as Nico called EMTs for help. Burkhalter, who is recovering nicely at home, said that Clarizio’s calming presence and fast thinking kept him from suffering far worse from the fall.
“I could have been paralyzed,” he said. “I didn’t know my back was broken.”
But Burkhalter’s back was not his only injury. At the trauma ward at Helene Fuld Medical Center — which Burkhalter lauds — the full assessment of the damage came in: five broken ribs, one punctured lung, a broken back, blood on the spinal cord, and a completely smashed pinkie. None of which Burkhalter was aware of, except for a dim awareness that his pinkie was in bad shape, because he kept staring at it. “The bone was sticking out,” Clarizio said.
Had Clarizio not been there to keep Burkhalter stable and immobile, the latter’s urge to get up and walk around might have left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. What’s more, because of the fall, Burkhalter learned that he had a five-centimeter aneurysm near his heart that could have killed him before this time next year.
And while Burkhalter agrees that a subtler way of letting him know about the aneurysm would have been fine, he calls the accident — his first on the job, incidentally — a blessing in disguise.
He also calls the night of the accident “the longest night of my life.” He spent the afternoon until the following morning on a stretcher before surgery because the staff needed “their A-Team” to deal with the complications brought on by that aneurysm, he said.
After that, a two-hour surgery fixed his injuries. The aneurysm will be dealt with before long.
Burkhalter spent a month in the hospital and recovering at St. Lawrence Rehabilitation Center. Clarizio visited him three times but hasn’t been to see him at home.
Clarizio, apart from the ringing praise he received from Burkhalter and his wife, Diane, was roundly applauded by the Ewing School District.
Ludwig took Clarizio’s story straight to the vice principal’s office because “it was above and beyond typical student of the month” actions, she said. She calls him “one of the most humble young men,” and said she was equally impressed by his heroics as his matter-of-fact description of his role in the accident.
Clarizio attributes his medical bent to his mother, a nurse who once worked for the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and now works independently. After high school, he plans to become an EMT.
The location, though, doesn’t matter. “I’d be fine at any hospital, helping people,” he said.
Back at work, Clarizio is a bit of a celebrity, which he appreciates, but also shrugs off. Burkhalter will not be back to work until at least the end of January, maybe February, he said. He’s not in a rush, but he is eager to get back to life as he knew it before the fall.
“I can’t say enough nice about Nico,” he said. “Good kid. He should be very proud of himself.”
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