Mr. Johansen has a weak heart. On this particular Saturday night, his heart will stop, he will die, but he won't remain dead for long.
It was a Saturday night. Mr. Johansen and his wife ordered out for pizza. About 25 minutes after placing the order and hanging up the phone, Mr. Johansen fell back onto the sofa clutching his chest with a very pained face. Two minutes later, he was dead.
Right at that moment, however, fortune came knocking on the Johansen's door. It was the pizza man. It just so happened that this particular pizza man was a laid-off paramedic, Joe Kerney, who was trained in CPR.
Joe Kerney, 24, had been working at the local hospital as a paramedic. But Kerney had recently lost his job because the local hospital, in order to cut their budget, had been laying off many of its employees. Joe had turned to delivering pizzas to help make ends meet.
Joe heard Mrs. Johansen screaming for help so he quickly entered the house. He instructed Mrs. Johansen to call 911 and he got Mr. Johansen on the floor and began administering CPR. Joe was able to keep Mr. Johansen's blood flowing until the arrival of the fire department's emergency rescue team. The paramedics used a defibrillator to get Mr. Johansen's heart going again. They immediately transported Mr. Johansen to the hospital.
According to the Fire Chief, Joe is credited with saving Mr. Johansen's life. “It's an absolute fact,” he said, “that if Joe hadn't arrived on the scene when he did, Mr. Johansen would have surely died.”
Mr. Cam Wiley, Joe's boss, said that there's more to this amazing story. “Joe wasn't even scheduled to work on that Saturday. In fact, he wasn't scheduled to come in until the next week, but Joe came in anyway since he wanted to earn some extra cash.” He added, “I think it was not Mr. Johansen's time to go.”
There is even more good news from this story. Joe has received a call from both a hospital and a fire department offering him a job in his chosen line of work.
Mr. Johansen laughs, “My doctor told me not to eat too much pizza, but if I hadn't ordered that pizza, I would be dead. The pizza man saved my life.”