It began as an ordinary Sunday morning. Ann and her husband were getting ready for a three-day Christian concert festival but decided first to attend St. Mary’s Church in New York Mills. Moments after the service began, everything changed.
“The last thing I remember was telling my husband that I did not feel well,” Ann recalls. “He yelled out for help as I collapsed. Lori, a nurse practitioner, came running from her pew. She recognized that I did not have a pulse and it was a cardiac arrest. She yelled out for 911.”
In those first critical minutes, three people inside the church became her lifeline. “Tom, a volunteer fireman, immediately started chest compressions,” she says. “Then Ryan, who was a registered nurse at the time, took over and continued for almost 15 minutes. There was not an automatic external defibrillator at church, but he was young and strong. He would not give up.”
As oxygen loss became a concern, Lori turned to Ann’s husband. “She asked him if he could do rescue breaths on his wife,” Ann says. “He learned it in the pew and on the spot.” Tom performed the breaths until first responders arrived. They continued CPR, delivered two shocks inside the church, and a third in the ambulance—moments before Ann’s heart began to beat again.
It was the teamwork inside St. Mary’s that held time still long enough for help to arrive.
The Responders
For Paramedic Anthony Arrigo and EMT Matthew Borden, both of Kunkel Ambulance Service, that July morning was a defining moment—a call that would stay with them for life.
Arrigo, now Operations Manager, describes EMS as more than a job but a calling. Saving a life that morning reaffirmed the power of teamwork, training, and faith under pressure. Borden, who entered the field after surviving a near-fatal illness at 18, says the experience deepened his belief in perseverance and the human spirit.
Both credit their tight-knit team at Kunkel for the support that sustains them, describing their coworkers as family. Their reflections speak to the heart of emergency medicine: compassion, composure, and commitment to the people they serve.
Later, Arrigo would step out of the ambulance to tell Ann’s husband she was alive again. He later told her he wished her husband could have seen his own face at that moment—a mixture of disbelief, relief, and gratitude.
A Second Chance
Ann’s life looks very different today. “I spend less energy worrying about what might happen because we cannot predict the future or control it. I value relationships more. I appreciate the essence of time, realizing there may be just minutes between life and death.”
Her mission now is education—and action. “If nothing is done, in about four minutes, cognitive impairment sets in during a cardiac arrest,” she says. “Every second counts. Education takes the fear out of action.”
She smiles when she talks about her rescuers. “To others, it might be hard to understand why a paramedic would tattoo your initials in a heart on his arm. But it gives me such a peaceful feeling, that I’m giving hope—that a cardiac arrest can survive—to first responders.”
Today, Ann has established close relationships with her three lifesavers from church and with Anthony and Matthew, who credit that day—and bringing Ann back to life—as the most impactful moment of their careers.
Carrying It Forward
Out of that extraordinary day came a new purpose. Ann now serves as a CPR advocate and Red Cap Ambassador for the American Heart Association, speaking about the importance of quick action and training. Her team, Ann’s Angels, was named in honor of the people who saved her life and was one of the top three community teams in last year’s America’s Greatest Heart Run & Walk.
This March, she’ll be walking again—side by side with friends, family, and the heroes who made her second chance possible.
Through courage, skill, and purpose, one Sunday morning’s tragedy became a movement of gratitude—a living reminder that every heartbeat is a gift, and that learning to save one can change everything.
