By: Evan Peterson

On paper, Michelle Fan looks like an ideal emergency responder. But if you were to ask her about that, she’d tell you, “I’m a nurse practitioner. I mean, my specialty is mental health. So, it’s not that I’m out here doing this stuff on people all the time. I’m basically someone that just talks and listens to people.”

Humble words, from a woman, who last September, performed CPR on a man to bring him back to life.

In a phone interview months after the incident, Fan relived that day. It was during a routine trip to her hometown grocery store, a Publix in Thomasville, Georgia, where her “fight or flight” instincts were put to the test after hearing commotion an aisle over.

“I heard a woman calling out the name ‘Wayne’ and another person calling out for others to get back,” said Fan. “I try to be real sensitive to intuition, and at that moment, it was no question: go.”

Dropping everything, she rounded the corner and found a man lying flat on the ground with his terrified wife nearby.

‘I’m a nurse practitioner, and we get this training routinely’ Fan said at the time, referring to the American Red Cross CPR training she received through her employer. “But honestly,” she related, “it was the first time I had ever come upon something like this outside of training. Thank goodness for the training because that is what kicked in.”

Just as instructed: she assessed the situation, checked for breathing and a pulse, made sure someone was calling 9-1-1, and began chest compressions as a store employee retrieved the store’s AED. An automated external defibrillator, used in conjunction with CPR, can deliver a shock to restart the heart.

Wayne Martin’s wife Martha also shared her memories of the day he collapsed. The two had been shopping for a birthday cake for their grandson.

"He just looked like he was asleep and couldn’t say anything. His color didn’t change,” said Martha Martin. “I was scared to death.”

Anyone witnessing what was happening will tell you those initial moments of CPR felt like an eternity, but in actuality, only a minute had ticked by before the store employee returned with the lifesaving device.

“We continued compressions while we got his shirt up and placed the pads. We followed the instructions on the machine, stepped back, heard that it was going to shock,” said Fan. “It gave him one shock, and when it said ‘clear’, we went back to check for a pulse.”

It was what happened next that Fan says, she’ll never forget.

“It was one of those – ‘thank you, God, thank you God moments’ because it was such a strong, bounding pulse that he had.”

The chest of Wayne Martin, the man brought back from the brink, began to rise, and fall, the color started returning to his face, and his eyes opened as his pulse was restored. He took a few deep breaths before trying to talk with Fan and his wife, but truth be told – he doesn’t remember doing any of that.

“I looked at the cheesecake and that’s the last thing I remember until I came-to in the ambulance,” said Wayne.

Paramedics arrived moments after he was resuscitated and quickly shuttled him to a nearby hospital. It was there doctors told him about what had happened.

“One of the doctors said, ‘Did you thank the lady who saved your life?’” recalled Wayne. “I said, ‘what lady?’” The doctor laughed and replied, ‘The lady that saved your life!’ I said, ‘I don’t know nothing about it!’”

The doctor went on to explain that without a heartbeat, Wayne was dead when he hit the floor. The quick action taken by Fan and ready access to an AED brought him back to life again.

Wayne would go on to spend the better part of a week in the hospital. Behind the scenes, Martha was working to find their hero.

A few days later, after doing some Facebook sleuthing, Martha found a woman whose name matched that of the stranger that saved her husband’s life.

“I instantly messaged her and asked was she the lady who did CPR and saved my husband’s life the day before, and she said yes she was!”

Fan says the messages that followed were gifts she never expected.

“When I got the Facebook message from Martha, I just cried. Her messages of thanks were just so moving.”

The Martin’s and Fan met again for the first time since Wayne’s cardiac incident on Monday, March 14th in Thomasville when Fan was presented with the American Red Cross Certificate of Merit. This award is the highest honor given to an individual who saves or sustains a life with skills or knowledge learned through Red Cross training.

“I would implore people… anybody, everybody, needs to learn this skill,” said Fan, adding “You don’t have to be a nurse to save a life. Anybody can do this, and I hope that they would.”

To learn more about American Red Cross lifesaving training, visit www.redcross.org/training. To learn more about the American Red Cross Lifesaving Awards Program, visit www.lifesavingawards.org.