On Jan. 7, former Ralston Valley hockey standout Tony Salazar made his debut for Metro State. He had a goal, an assist and got into a fight—an impressive outing for the freshman’s first-ever college appearance and, as it turns out, a game in which Salazar suffered a massive heart attack.
“The heart attack started during the game, and he kept playing, even though afterward he told me his heart was hurting and his lungs were burning,” said Tony’s mom, Jessica Bidwell. “He finished the game out and then told me, ‘Something’s not right.’ There was an emergency room right across the street, and when we went here, doctors told me he had a massive heart attack and they called him an ambulance to get to Good Samaritan.”
At Good Samaritan, things went from bad to worse for Salazar, who had a previous medical scare during Ralston Valley’s playoff run last March when a knee injury suffered in the semifinal caused blood clots to form in his legs and then spread into his lungs.
“At Good Samaritan, they put a little machine in his heart to help it pump and when they tried to chase one of the blood clots to get it out, a clot went down into his vessel and killed the whole left side of his heart,” Bidwell said. “So then they flew him in a helicopter to University, because that’s where they do open heart surgeries. He was getting worked up for a heart transplant.”
Then Salazar—a Pomona High School graduate renowned for his on-ice toughness during his playing days at Ralston Valley—did what Salazar does: He dug in and battled. At University they put him on ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation life support) for a week in oder to give his body a chance to recover from the shock of the heart attack, and he started to improve at an accelerated rate.
“It was definitely scary knowing that the only thing that kept me between living and dying was a machine,” Tony Salazar said. “Also, I found out afterward that I had a pretty high possibility of losing my leg due to the EMCO hoses in my right leg. It sucked because I just had to lay on my back and hope, but I tried to stay as positive as I possibly could.”
Salazar’s heart was working at just 10 percent on the night of the heart attack, and as of this weekend, his ticker tested at 52.1 percent. The normal range of an average adult is 55-65 percent, so Salazar and his family are thrilled that he’ll probably be going home sometime in the next few days. His doctors, meanwhile, say it’s miracle that the physical forward who racked up 23 goals and 23 assists last season has recovered so quickly.
“There’s still parts of his left side of his heart that are dead and will probably never come back, but part of it has regained function, and doctors think he won’t need a heart transplant anymore, thank God,” Bidwell said. “We’ve been really, really happy. His heart’s been functioning on its own, and he’ll be on blood thinners the rest of his life to keep his heart working right because it’s by no means normal. And he’s definitely done playing hockey.”
But even with Salazar forced into an abrupt retirement, the response of the Colorado hockey community to his latest ordeal proves the enormous mark he’s left on the game at just 18-years-old. Last spring, online fundraising helped Salazar’s family get through his first medical emergency, and the same is happening this time. His current GoFundMe page—which can be accessed at https://www.gofundme.com/tony-salazars-recovery—had over $22,100 in donations through Friday.
As for a future with no hockey, Salazar’s okay with that. He has a working heart, his family and his ambitions—he’s currently employed as a community service officer, with the ultimate goal of becoming a police officer. The entire ordeal has made him appreciate the time he did get to spend out on the ice, as well as the time ahead—with his health, and without hockey.
“It’s definitely tough because I’ve played since I was four, and 14 years of playing the game I love is hard to just give up,” Salazar said. “But what I told my mom was, ‘If me hanging up the skates ensures that I won’t be back here again, then I’m okay with that.’ I definitely don’t want to be in the hospital or have these clotting issues ever again.”