Due to the quick actions of several good Samaritans during a half marathon in Lynchburg on Saturday, April 4, an Owens Crossroads, Alabama man is alive today.

While walking in the Oak Barrel Half Marathon, in under four minutes, Lynn Collyar, 69, suffered from ventricular fibrillation into cardiac arrest that could have been fatal. His wife, Sarah Green Collyar, said she had jogged several steps ahead of him and then heard a commotion behind her. She turned around and saw her husband lying on the pavement. “He landed flat on his face and broke his nose.”

He had stopped breathing and immediately several race participants stopped to help him. “They were wonderful people who helped save his life,” said Collyar. A spectator on the sidelines called 911. These total strangers gave him eight minutes of chest compression, she said. “He could have had a stroke or brain damage.” Collyar doesn’t have the names of all of those who gave her husband aid, but she knows one man is a police offi cer on the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville and another woman was Theresa McGuire of Fayetteville.

McGuire, a nurse practitioner with Dr. Theresa Morrison’s office, was among those who helped him. “She grabbed me and held me. She said that he was going to be OK.”

Moore County Emergency Medical Services arrived in minutes. The paramedics used a defibrillator along with an injection to get the heart pumping the way it should, she said. “Theresa said they have a pulse…” Collyar said, “The support Theresa provided was great.”

He was loaded into an ambulance and soon a helicopter landed in an open area near the Tolley House Bed & Breakfast to fly him to Huntsville Hospital.

In the meantime, a Moore County Sheriff’s deputy took her to her car and she drove to Huntsville Hospital. On Monday, he underwent surgery to replace a stent that had a blockage, she said.

She praised the volunteers and EMS paramedics who saved her husband’s life. “They were incredible. They saved his life. They should be so proud of themselves. They put him in front of themselves and rendered aid.

“They were so selfless – it was God’s intervention with those people,” she said.

Lynn Collyar is a retired U.S. Army Major General and retired Senior Commander for the Redstone Arsenal. Lynn and Sarah have been very athletic throughout their lives and have previously participated in events such as the marathon.