FARMINGTON HILL, Mich. (WXYZ/CNN Newsource/WKRC) – A 93-year-old gym regular suffered a heart attack while working out and may have not survived if not for the quick action of a stranger.
Russ Loomis, 93, attends his YMCA three times a week for over an hour at a time to keep active. While working out on October 30, he quickly realized something was wrong.
“I said, ‘I don’t feel well,'” he remembered. “I could only stay on there 30 minutes today, and walked over and fell down.”
Local outlet WXYZ reported that Loomis suffered a massive heart attack, which he said was caused by a condition that also took the lives of his grandparents, his parents, and multiple aunts and uncles.
Loomis said that if it ever happened to him, he figured he was “gone just like everyone else had been.”
Another YMCA member, Melissa Gedrich, was walking into the gym when she saw Loomis fall and immediately jumped into action.
“I bent down, I measured where my hands were supposed to go, and I just started doing compressions,” Gedrich said. “Ten o’clock is late for me to come to the gym, but I came anyways because I was like, I’m here, I’m out, I’m going to get my workout in.”
In a wonderful coincidence, Gedrich completed a CPR course just five days before the incident. After using the information she learned to save Loomis’ life, she encouraged others to learn how to perform CPR as well.
“Just get the tools, take the class so that you know how to do it so you can save someone’s life possibly one day,” she said.
“If she would have been three minutes later, we wouldn’t be talking,” Loomis said.
