09:57 AM CST on Thursday, January 19, 2006

By Doug Miller
11 News


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A restaurant on Houston's west side is taking an unusual precaution that could save customers' lives.

The restaurant's owner believes every business should go to the same trouble and expense.

This heart-healthy idea sprung from a life and death crisis.

When you visit a good Italian restaurant, you expect good food and good service.

But at Carmelo's Ristorante, near the celebrity photos on the walls, hangs something unexpected.

"When you need it, that's right away there," said restaurant manager Juan Gomez, gesturing to the spot on the wall, right next to the phone, where the defibrillator hangs.

It's a portable defibrillator.

"It's magic. That's all what I can say," said Carmelo Mauro, restaurant owner.

To understand how this device ended up in a fine Houston restaurant, it just takes one look at the video from a surveillance camera at Austin's airport.

The man on the ground was Gary Terry, the Texas Director of the American Heart Association.

"Deliver shock now," said the robotic voice from defibrillator on the video.

Security guards shocked Terry with a defibrillator and saved his life.

Terry and other activists campaigned businesses to buy defibrillators.

"I mean, when someone says, 'If I'm here alive, it's thank you to this little machine, I mean, there isn't much convincing to do', " said Mauro.

"And they show you all the details here on this machine," said Gomez.

Now people who work at Carmelo's are trained to run the house defibrillator.

And Mauro, who's the incoming president of the Texas Restaurant Association, personally thinks every business should be required to keep one of these devices hanging on the wall -- like a standard item on a good restaurant's menu.