Cardiac arrest survivor reconnects with good Samaritan at Chicago Heart Walk

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’s 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.

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’t 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.

About 15 minutes had passed — most of which Holcomb said he doesn’t remember — 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’s Chicago Heart Walk around Soldier Field. As she anxiously waited for Miles to arrive near the event's survivor tent, Holcomb, a New Carlisle, Indiana resident, said, “I’m a little nervous.”

The two waved to each other as Miles, 59, approached, smiled then embraced a heartwarming hug. Holcomb told her thank you — for helping save his life and for making the two-hour trip to meet him Friday.

“The 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’ve been thinking about her,” Holcomb said.

Last year, after Miles helped Holcomb get upright following the chest compressions, she noticed his name on the back of his cycling shirt.

“I just couldn’t get Jim out of my mind, and so I just kept thinking I feel like I need to just know that he’s OK and that what I did mattered. I couldn’t sleep knowing whether or not he was OK,” said the 38-year-old.

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 the case it is needed.

“From a physical standpoint, I’ve felt pretty good,” Holcomb said. “I’m treating things with medications. I still have a great sense of gratitude for Brittany and her actions.”

Holcomb’s son, Teddy Holcomb, was also riding in the cycling event — the Apple Cider Century — but had not met Miles until Friday.

“I’m not really religious, but it feels like divine intervention, and [I’m] just forever grateful. I feel super lucky that she was there,” said Teddy Holcomb, 25.

The re-connection 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’s life but rarely do they meet again.

He said the action “kind of feels like it’s my life’s purpose.”

The system is still in the works, but it would rely on good Samaritans to give their contact information to first responders.

“In developing that registry, I want other people to be able to have that feeling of finding the person that saved their life.”