Returning home from a workout at the gym on Feb. 27, Ryan Thomas suddenly found himself in a race against time, working to save his neighbor’s life.

Thomas, a captain with the Sandwich Community Fire Protection District (SCFPD), had just pulled into his driveway when he saw a phone message reporting a man in distress.

Seconds later he would discover that the man was his neighbor, John Nelson. If he would’ve found out any later and not reacted any quicker, John probably would not have been at the Sandwich Community Fire Protection District on Monday evening, March 29, eating pizza while celebrating his life being saved and the heroic action of Thomas and the other Sandwich first responders.

“Everybody talks about what a true American hero is nowadays and you guys get so much crap about making instant decisions and you better make it the right way or else,” said John’s wife, Cheryl Nelson. “By making a really fast decision, Ryan, I owe you his life. You are a true American hero. You may have had other plans and not ran over that day, but by the grace of God you came over and really changed the future of our family.”

Ryan has been teaching CPR for several years and recognized the importance of swift action. He has been a neighbor of the Nelsons for three years while the Nelsons have been in the same home for 30 years.

“I told (John) if he had any fighting chance I’m glad as I was home, because I’ve been teaching CPR for five or six years and anybody that does this job knows that if you don’t start CPR early then the outcome is not very good,” he said. “I was glad I was home. I had just gotten home from working out.”

Amidst the chaos, Cheryl didn’t even realize it was Thomas who first burst in the their home.

“Somebody was looking out for us that day because all of a sudden somebody flies through the front door and I didn’t even recognize him,”she said. “I was like, ‘Who are you?’”

It was Ryan.

“All of a sudden he took over,” she said. “It was like Hercules. John’s still got the fingerprints and bruises to prove it. It’s such a miracle that we have an EMT team in Sandwich. I can’t even believe it. It’s a miracle to have you living next door.”

John had stopped breathing due to blockage of the left anterior descending artery, informally referred to as the widowmaker due to its high death risk.

“(Cheryl) was screaming that he was choking and I looked at him, and maybe he is or maybe he’s not, so I did the Heimlich (maneuver) a couple of times and food came out, but it didn’t seem like he was choking, but he wasn’t breathing normally,” Ryan said. “I started doing CPR before the medics got there and then they showed up with the monitors and everything else and put him on the monitor. We shocked him once and he went into a normal rhythm, and then the engine got there and helped us load him up and went to the hospital.”

At the hospital, a deeply concerned Cheryl found solace from Mike Pruski, an assistant chief with the SCFPD.

“It was a frantic moment and I think about you (Mike),” she said. “You sat by me in the emergency room and I’m sure it was intentional in your training to do it because I stopped screaming. You just sat and talked to me about knowing John and when you guys were kids as they were working on him next door continuing to try to keep his heart rate going. I appreciated that a lot. It kind of let me take my mind off of things for just a little bit, enough to think about what the next steps would be. I went into a project management mode.”

John spent five days in the hospital, three of which he remained unconscious.

“He had the angiogram and found that it was the LAD artery that was blocked 99% and they put a stent in it and they moved him out of ICU on that Thursday,” Cheryl said. “On Friday morning I knew he was back.”

John texted her, “I don’t care what you have to do but get me out of here.”

Now he has to figure out what can be done to keep him out of there.

“We realize he’s got some things to do and got to figure out stuff, and there are still some risks, but he’s still here,” Cheryl said. “The fact that he had no symptoms, they don’t know what the cause could be. Could it be progressive coronary artery disease? Could it be the blocked LAD artery or is it because he is with AFib? Nothing says it couldn’t happen again.”

He also received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine the day before it happened.

Good thing Ryan is still next door.

“You can’t leave your house,” Cheryl said, laughing, and so did John and the rest of the party.