A church visitor was in the right place at the right time to save a life last week when a fellow attendee suffered a potentially deadly heart attack.
Dr. Gary Weinstein, the director of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, is Jewish, but he happened to be attending services with his wife and father-in-law at Lover’s Lane United Methodist Church on that particular Sunday, August 28.
During the service, Dr. Weinstein noticed something was wrong with a man sitting across the aisle. The man’s head had dropped back, and he appeared to be in cardiac arrest.
Seeing the need, Weinstein sprang into action. After identifying himself as a doctor, he began life-saving measures.
A church worker brought a defibrillator that the doctor used to shock the unconscious man, and then Weinstein started CPR. Meanwhile, the senior pastor called 911. After about a minute, the man began to breathe again, and his pulse stabilized.
Shortly thereafter, he was taken to the hospital by the paramedics who had arrived.
The heart attack victim, Bob Richardson, 72, was in the hospital for five days, but he was back at the church the following Sunday to give thanks.
“There’s a lot more deserving people that the Lord could have saved, but I’m glad He picked me that day,” Richardson said.
The church has since added three more defibrillators to the ones they already had to increase accessibility to the devices if the need were ever to arise again.
Weinstein said that he just did what anyone with a heart and knowledge of CPR would do in that situation.
“I was just in the right place at the right time. No question,” he acknowledged.
