Mary Jo Cipollini, Poughkeepsie, NY – 36 at time of event (2002)

A trip to the supermarket can change your life forever. Mary Jo had taken her two-year-old Tommy, and her parents, grocery shopping one morning in early October. At the store, she received a call from the nurse at her six-year-old daughter’s school, asking Mary Jo to pick Ally up because she had an earache. Unperturbed, Mary Jo left Tommy with Grandma and Grandpa, and headed out to the parking lot with a handful of shopping bags, to collect her daughter.

Tomas Schafer, Boise, ID – 61 at time of event (2008)

He’s six-foot tall, strong and fit, and weighed 200 lbs before he began exercising one Monday afternoon in February this year. Tomas can’t really tell you what happened. In fact this ex-sports-journalist told me can’t even remember the 2008 Super Bowl. “We had guests over to watch it together and, apparently, it was an exciting game!” He also lost Christmas, New Years and all of January. He does, however, have love; his fiancée Marilee can attest to that. And he has God guiding him forward through this troubling time.

Colby Brooks, Portland, OR – 30 at time of event (2008)

Colby Brooks is an athlete, just like his brothers. “I’m super-active,” he says with pride, describing how he goes hiking and biking alone into the mountains with 80 pounds of camping gear on his back. While he wouldn’t class his physical exertions as extreme sports, you could certainly say they are at that end of the spectrum. His specific interest is bike racing—the kind that requires you to pump hard with your legs. In fact he was doing just that one Monday last month in the Mountain Bike Short Track Series at PIR (Portland International Raceway). Today, he can’t really remember that fateful evening. He can only relay the story he’s been told.

Jose Antoni, M.D., Corpus Christi ,TX – 40 at time of event (1967)

Dr. Antoni recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his cardiac arrest and the memory of that day is still fresh. He and a friend were having breakfast one morning prior to going fishing, when he felt nauseous, with a vague pressure in his chest. As he describes it “I was in denial. I was feeling pretty sick. But I was only forty40 years old, and I said ‘This is not going to happen to me’”.

Cheri Olson, M.D., La Crosse, WI – 51 at the time of the event (2008)

Where is the best place to have a major medical emergency? In a hospital, where there is a plentiful supply of doctors and nurses. And so it was. Dr. Cheri Olson was seeing one of her more sprightly patients, Edna Athnos, and both will remember that consultation forever. Edna watched as her physician promptly died before her very eyes. Cheri had fallen onto the exam room floor and was “just gone, with her eyes open.”

Steve Doochin, Scarsdale, NY – 50 at time of event (2000)

Steve was more than the average type A personality, maybe even type AAA. Now, he feels more like a type A-. He was pushing the envelope of life and feeling a little clammy one June day in 2000, while at a CVS store getting the prescriptions for their kids’ summer camp. He recalled a recent visit to the dentist, where he was told he had high blood pressure. So, while waiting for the prescriptions, he tried out the blood pressure cuff, and said to himself “There’s something wrong with this machine.” The reading just didn’t seem right.