OXFORD, Mich. (WXYZ) — Ed Klimek is the owner of Italia Gardens.
On Friday, we stood at the side of his restaurant where a man almost died last Saturday. Doctors say he would have died if it wasn't for what some are calling divine intervention.
"And we thought, God, if it could have happened maybe a few minutes later, maybe nobody would have found him," Klimek said.
It was around 7:50 p.m. Saturday when a customer leaving Italia Gardens noticed a man laying on the ground outside the restaurant. The customer stopped to help and had his wife call into the restaurant for assistance.
"I just heard some of my employees yelling for me, and I came running up," Klimek said.
He said once outside, he noticed the person needing help was another employee.
"I saw Chris, who is our dishwasher, face down in the parking lot, and there’s a pool of blood around his head," Klimek said.
He said when he and the customer rolled Chris Gallagher over, he wasn't breathing and had no pulse.
Quickly, Klimek and the customer started taking turns administering CPR until the ambulance arrived.
After, the two had no idea what happened to Gallagher until this Friday.
Will Gallagher, Chris' son, made the trip to Italia Gardens to find the heroes who he said saved his father's life.
Watch Will Gallagher meet Ed Klimek and thank him in the video below:
Will Gallagher told us that at the hospital, doctors said his dad's heart was only at 10% that Saturday night. He had gone into complete cardiac arrest, and early CPR saved his life.
"He was literally dead in the parking lot and if it wasn’t for Ed and Jason, I wouldn’t have a father," Will Gallagher said. "I owe ya’ll everything."
As far as who the customer is who helped Klimek that night. It's Jason Harrison.
He joined over Zoom Friday to meet Will Gallagher.
"I was really curious about the outcome and was just incredibly happy to hear that he’s awake and alert," Harrison told Will Gallagher.
It turns out both Klimek and Harrison are firefighters.
The two men said that neither of them were supposed to be there that night and it was teamwork that made this a success.
"They really train people nowadays that every two minutes, you should swap out the person doing compressions, so you can continue doing high quality CPR, and I think we did a great job with that," Harrison said.
Klimek added, "I don’t think people realize how physical it is."
The survival rate for cardiac arrest is about 10%. Survival chances decrease by 10% for every minute that immediate CPR is delayed.
However, thanks to the quick actions and teamwork of these strangers, Will Gallagher said his dad Chris is making a full recovery.
"It was just divine intervention that put us in the right place at the right time," Harrison said.
