When his wife, Moira, suffered a heart attack last year, Bert McIntosh realised how helpless people can feel before medical teams arrive.
Now, with Mrs McIntosh safely on the mend, the grateful businessman has taken steps to ensure others can provide lifesaving assistance if someone falls ill in future.
The owner of McIntosh Plant Hire in Echt has joined forces with the Sandpiper Trust to instal a defibrillator at his premises and provide training in how to use it for his staff.
Mr McIntosh said he was spurred into action after Moira, 74, fell ill without warning last August.
“She just keeled over,” he said.
“A fast response paramedic team was sent and wired her all up, but she was in quite a bit of pain and giving her morphine was having little effect.
“That made me think about what can happen so quickly. Heart disease is a smoking gun that can hit anyone at any time.
“I have been really keen to get a defibrillator and get some of the staff trained in using it – the machine has been proven to be effective and simple to use after the training.”
Mr McIntosh, who recently celebrated his 70th birthday, is also an amateur athlete and intends taking a smaller version of the machine along to the various race meetings he will attend in the summer.
He said: “Someone could be 10 miles into the hills and take ill – it could save their life.”
Employees and family members attended the company’s first training session this week.
It was led by Graeme Ramage, from the British Association for Immediate Care (Basics), who demonstrated how to pump a heart attack victim’s chest to try to restart their heart beat and how to operate the defibrillator, which gives a small electric shock.
The event was organised by the Aberdeenshire-based Sandpiper Trust charity, which was set up by relatives of Sandy Dickson who drowned, aged 14, while in Canada in 2000.
The Perthshire schoolboy’s parents, Penny and Aly Dickson, joined forces with Sandy’s aunt and uncle, Claire and Robin Maitland, who stay near Banchory, in an effort to help save lives, especially in remote areas.
Since then the trust has distributed more than 900 Sandpiper bags, each containing £1,000 of equipment to volunteer medics.