Eric Ross has been given the gift of life twice in his lifetime - once when he was born and another on Nov. 12 when his heart stopped at the UNBC running track.
That's when four people and a machine seemed to coalesce by fate to bring him back to life.
"It is humbling to be the recipient of this perfect survival scenario," said Ross. "There has to be a plan in there somewhere, I just don't know what it is."
On Saturday, four months to the day after Ross collapsed at the Northern Sports Centre, he and his heroes got together for dinner to talk for the first time about what happened.
"There is no way I can ever repay this. How can you repay someone who gives you your life back?" he said.
One of his rescuers, John Lane, shot a glance at him.
"Repay us? Weren't you a police officer for 30 years? Your career was helping people in distress, keeping the public safe," Lane said.
Lane is the deputy chief of Prince George Fire Rescue Service, but he also finds time to help coach his daughter's soccer team. The team just happened to have a workout at the sports centre the morning of Nov. 12 and his emergency responder instincts tingled when he heard commotion directed towards the upstairs track.
There he found three sports centre staff already performing CPR on a patient, so he joined their efforts. One of them brought the sport centre's automated external defibrillator (AED) but hadn't hooked it up yet, so Lane went to work.
"It was an easy decision to make," he said. "The AED was right at his side, CPR was being performed very, very well, so the next thing was to get that defibrillator attached. It was the next logical step."
He has no memory of that moment, or more than 24 hours around it for that matter, but he programmed his cardio machine results into his iPod as is his habit, so later on he knew he had his heart attack seconds after 6:48 a.m.
Kristen Harrott was walking a lap to warm up for her day on staff at the sports centre at 6:48 a.m. when she saw a man doing what she thought was muscle stretching exercises - until she realized he was completely flat and not moving.
"I just reacted and called for help," said Harrott. "Heather [Chase] and Kevin [Nowottnick] came running and we all just pitched in. It was pretty cool how we all worked together."
Nowottnick started the chest compressions while Chase raced for a first aid kit and mouth-to-mouth mask, and Harrott went for the defibrillator.
"I am just glad Kevin was there because if I had to do it on my own, I don't know if I could have kept up the chest compressions like he did without getting tired," said Chase.
"But he was in the zone. I kept asking him if he needed a break, if he wanted a tradeoff with me doing the breaths, but he just kept going. And I was supposed to be there by myself."
Each part was played to perfection because within two minutes of defibrillation, a couple of electric jolts, Ross showed vital signs. It was enough to get him into the ambulance with a thread of life still attached, and paramedics did the rest along with hospital staff.
"Do you know how many people outside of a hospital survive this type of cardiac arrest?" said Ross. "Seven. And only 13 per cent if it happens in a hospital. I was in a perfect confluence of variables to ensure my survival occurred."
It seems fate played a role in his survival.
Nowottnick said he "wasn't even supposed to be there."
"I came in three hours early to work on a project. And John just happened to be there for the soccer team. It was a lot of coincidences," he said.
And that wasn't the end of coincidences.
The trio all knew Ross's kids, but did not know the man whose life was now in their hands was their friends' father.
The most emotional moment at the reunion over dinner was Lane's observation of years of public indifference to people in grave distress, on one hand, but the decisive actions of the three young UNBC staff on the other.
There were lumps in all throats when he explained how this event looked from the professional perspective.
"It is one thing for me to become involved," he said. "I am extensively trained for this, I have done this you might as well say a thousand times, I have used AEDs, I can do chest compressions in my sleep, firefighters are absolutely ready for a situation like this.
"But the intervention by these guys is truly amazing. If there is a message here it is, if you see someone who needs help, for God's sake, do something. You don't have to be trained, you don't have to do it perfectly correctly, just do whatever you can to help."
Harrott saw her role in the plan plainly.
"My dad had a kidney donation on Dec. 13 of 2009 and I am grateful to that family that did that for him, I understand they went through a hard time over this, but I had no way of saying thanks directly to them," she said.
"This is my way of just paying it forward for someone else's dad. It is part of a life circle that people contribute to you and you contribute forward."
John Lane's plea for the AED
UNBC staff told The Citizen that UNBC management initially resisted placing AEDs around the campus, but key lobbying was done. A few were installed in strategic locations, and since this incident, new plans are afoot to install another at the sports centre and also have an office put upstairs so more eyes are on the track.
"It didn't matter that I have training in this, anyone can use that machine," said Lane. "It is easier to use than a common fire extinguisher, and there are easy instructions if you don't feel sure. There is a total absence of liability, if you are trying to save someone's life. I am impressed that UNBC chose to have one available there."
Lane has heard rumours of organizations that considered installing AEDs but balked at the notion of legal liability. He said the Good Samaritan Act spoke to that and took all legal blowback off the provision of and the use of a defibrillator, if you are in the act of using it for its intended purpose.
Despite the low survival rate of cardiac arrest patients, Lane knows of three more cases since Ross's incident in November where public CPR and/or AED have saved a local life.
