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<\/p>\nJim Holcomb was three-fourths of the way through a 100-mile bike ride in rural Michigan last year when he collapsed on the side of the road and went into cardiac arrest. While driving home from her son\u2019s soccer game, Brittany Miles noticed Holcomb, who was visiting from Albany Park, on the ground beside another man who was on the phone and appeared frantic. Miles knew she had to stop.<\/p>\n
Miles, who has been CPR-certified for about seven years but had never performed the emergency procedure, checked on Holcomb and realized he had no pulse and wasn\u2019t breathing. She tried to get him to respond, then immediately started chest compressions until he started to make noise and she was able to bring him up on his side. She performed another round of chest compressions as the bystander on the phone tried to direct EMS to their exact location.<\/p>\n
About 15 minutes had passed \u2014 most of which Holcomb said he doesn\u2019t remember \u2014 until an ambulance arrived at the scene, and EMS took him to the emergency room. Nearly a year after the Sept. 29 incident, the two finally met in person again Friday at the American Heart Association\u2019s Chicago Heart Walk around Soldier Field. As he anxiously waited for Miles, a New Carlisle, Indiana, resident, to arrive near the event\u2019s survivor tent, Holcomb said, \u201cI\u2019m a little nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two waved to each other as Miles approached, smiled then embraced him in a heartwarming hug. Holcomb told her thank you \u2014 for helping save his life and for making the two-hour trip to meet him Friday. <\/p>\n
Jim Holcomb greets Brittany Miles Friday during the American Heart Association\u2019s Chicago Heart Walk .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sense of gratitude that I had was immense and something that I still have for that. I still get kind of teared up throughout the year. I\u2019ve been thinking about her,\u201d Holcomb, 59, said. Last year, after Miles helped Holcomb get upright following the chest compressions, she noticed his name on the back of his cycling shirt. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t get Jim out of my mind, and so I just kept thinking I feel like I need to just know that he\u2019s OK and that what I did mattered. I couldn\u2019t sleep knowing whether or not he was OK,\u201d said the 38-year-old.<\/p>\n
She eventually tracked Holcomb down on LinkedIn and learned Holcomb had undergone various tests that led doctors to learn he had two fully clogged bypass grafts which caused the cardiac arrest. Holcomb had undergone a triple bypass surgery around 15 years ago, he said. He underwent another surgery in December to implant a defibrillator in his chest that will trigger in case it is needed. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The reconnection has spurred Jim Holcomb to develop a registry for people in similar situations to reunite survivors and rescuers because, in many cases, their paths briefly cross at a critical point in one\u2019s life, but rarely do they meet again. He said the action \u201ckind of feels like it\u2019s my life\u2019s purpose.\u201d The system is still in the works, but it would rely on good Samaritans to give their contact information to first responders. Introduction to Cardiac Arrest Survival Jim Holcomb was three-fourths of the way through a 100-mile bike ride in rural Michigan last year when he collapsed on the side of the road and went into cardiac arrest. While driving home from her son\u2019s soccer game, Brittany Miles noticed Holcomb, who was visiting from Albany Park, on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/03aec0d\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1024x585+0+49\/resize\/1461x834!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F2b%2Fef%2Fc0c0ff1d4fd78dc348357ad82f87%2Fgoodsamaritan-092025-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28731,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28729\/revisions\/28731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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