Bob Aguilar was at the Happiest Place on Earth doing one of his favorite things on Earth when he started feeling warm.
It was New Year’s Eve 2023, and it wasn’t hot in Anaheim, California. The Hampton Roads resident felt winded as he played the bagpipes and marched roughly a half mile down Main Street as part of a band in Disneyland. He continued moving, though he stopped playing. His fingers mimicked the movements without the sound.
Once out of sight from spectators, he leaned against a concrete support for the monorail track. Sweat dripped from his face. He thought he needed a minute to catch his breath.
Aguilar needed an ambulance.
“I thought I had sprung a leak in my bag,” he said. “Turns out I was leaking somewhere else.”
Aguilar suffered an aneurysm in his ascending aorta. He was bleeding internally. His life changed in a big way that evening, and nearly a year and a half later, Aguilar will perform for the first time at a major event.
Aguilar is a piper for Tidewater Pipes and Drums, which will play at the Virginia International Tattoo this week. The military tattoo is the signature event of the Virginia Arts Festival and has several performances at Scope Thursday through Sunday.
Aguilar looks forward to wearing his cherished kilt, the same one that doctors started to remove after he arrived at UC Medical Center, his blood pressure dangerously low.
“Please don’t cut it off,” he pleaded, sentimental about the $500 wool tartan and unaware just how serious his medical condition was.
Without immediate treatment, death from Type A aortic dissection is exceptionally high in the first 24 hours. Lucky for him, a fellow piper named Mark O’Donnell, a friend he refers to as his guardian angel, is also a paramedic.
When Aguilar’s pressure dropped at the hospital, he flagged down a nurse who bolted to find a doctor. Seconds later, Aguilar was wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery.
Aguilar didn’t ring in the new year with his parents, family or play bagpipes as scheduled in the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1. He didn’t awaken from surgery and two post-surgical procedures until Jan. 6.
“Do you know what day it is?” he remembers being asked.
He didn’t.
“They explained to me that I had been through the most complicated heart surgery there is other than a heart transplant,” Aguilar said.
The Navy veteran, who is also a Portsmouth police officer, never worried about his health as a longtime SWAT team member. It took months of convalescence, including three weeks in the hospital, before he could return to duty. His doctor advised no bagpipes for six months.
“That kind of killed me to hear,” he said.
Aguilar, 54, describes himself as a “bagpipe nerdie” who recalls having a souvenir toy set when he was young. The instrument fascinates him.
“Literally, it’s the sound of the pipes,” he said. “It stirs something inside of you.”
Yet Aguilar wasn’t a musician. When he took his son’s trumpet into a Virginia Beach music store for repair in 2017, he struck up a conversation about the bagpipes with the woman behind the counter. She told him she was part of the Newport News Police Pipes and Drums. She became his teacher, and he became skilled enough to join Tidewater Pipes and Drums.
Aguilar participated in his first tattoo in 2022.
“It’s an amazing experience,” he said. “You’re meeting people from all over the world.”
He wasn’t strong enough to play last year. That makes him “overwhelmingly excited for this Tattoo, noting, “It’s the best time of the year.”
Jim Roberts, band manager of Tidewater Pipes and Drums, said, “Everyone who plays in the Tattoo loves it and becomes a fan for life, but Bob’s enthusiasm is next level. We’re thankful to have him back in the band and in the show … It means a lot to us to have him playing again.”
More than 300 donors contributed to a GoFundMe account set up by a friend and raised nearly $30,000. The money helped sustain him and his family during his recovery.
“The support came not only from friends from every facet of my life but also from complete strangers,” he said. “It’s very humbling.”
Bearing down to fill up the bag and blow the pipes for the Tattoo will test his strength. Aguilar promises to take it slow and easy and, most of all, to savor. Surviving after an aneurysm “shook me awake,” he said.
Living for the chase, crushing energy drinks and depriving himself of sleep are no longer his routine.
“Gratitude is really the overwhelming feeling I have,” Aguilar said. “It’s surreal to go from having fun at Disney to being in the hospital. I went from one of the happy places to almost not being there. Things I used to think are important are really not that big of a deal anymore. I want to do everything I can with the time I have left.”
Visit vafest.org/tattoo for tickets and information.
