A valuable, new piece of equipment designed to help save people’s lives will be added to two Oakland County Sheriff’s patrol cars in Oxford Township.

Last week, township officials voted 6-0 to purchase a couple of defibrillators from Physio-Control, Inc., a company based in Redmond, Washington, for a total of $3,358.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank Lenz, of the Oxford substation, recommended the purchase.

As a 19-year veteran of the county agency, Lenz has seen defibrillators save the lives of both citizens and deputies.

He told the board about four weeks ago, a deputy at the county jail experienced a life-threatening arrhythmia (an abnormal heart rhythm) while working the midnight shift.

“We had a debrillator on him within minutes and had him to the hospital within 8 minutes,” Lenz said. “If that defibrillator wasn’t available to us, he probably would not be with us and alive today.”

Lenz believes having defibrillators in patrol cars is vital because “quite often, our officers are the first people on scene whenever someone’s having a stroke or a heart attack.”

When a call related to a possible heart attack comes in, he said, “We step up our speed a little bit and go lights-and-sirens to get there.”

“All of our personnel are trained to use the defibrillators,” Lenz noted. “Hopefully, we never have to use them, but (they will be) available to save somebody’s life.”

The sergeant told the board if having these defibrillators in the patrol cars saves even just one life, “I think the expense is well worth it.”

Parks and Recreation Director Ron Davis noted he would be interested in getting some defibrillators as well.

“Our goal is to have one in every maintenance truck (with) as much traveling as we do in the parks,” he told the board. “It would certainly be nice to have three of them that are mobile in our vehicles.

“I’ll have to take it back to the (parks and recreation) commission, but we just worked on our budget last night and there’s more than enough room to do that. I agree with the sergeant when he says if you save one life, it’s paid for itself.”