10-07-2025
This runner survived cardiac arrest. Reddit helped him find his rescuer.
Tommy Chan doesn't remember it, but after he collapsed from a cardiac arrest, a woman driving by parked her car on the side of the road and gave him CPR. She kept going until paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital in critical condition.
More than a month later, while wondering about the bystander who helped him survive that May night, Chan posted on Reddit: 'Did you save my life?' as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation first reported.
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The post received thousands of upvotes and reached the nurse practitioner who gave him CPR, Tawnya Shimizu. Her daughter, Tessa Shimizu, cried when she learned Chan was alive.
'It's been running through my mind if you were ok,' Tessa replied to Chan's post. 'Seeing this is a weight lifted off my shoulders.'
Chan, Tawnya and Tessa connected and met June 28, when Chan thanked Tawnya in-person for saving his life. But Chan, 39, told The Washington Post that he plans to truly thank Tawnya by living 'my life the fullest from here on out.'
Chan needed help on May 20, after he finished a five-kilometer run past Dow's Lake in Ottawa around 8 p.m. Chan was walking to his downtown home when he collapsed.
One passerby called 911, and two others who weren't trained in CPR tried to do compressions by following the 911 operator's instructions. Tawnya was driving Tessa home from her boyfriend's house when they spotted people trying to help Chan.
'You need to stop,' Tessa, 20, recalled telling her mom. 'And you need to help because you're a nurse.'
Tawnya quickly did a U-turn, introduced herself at the scene and took over CPR. The scene was eerily quiet - just the sounds of traffic and the 911 operator, Tawnya said.
'I went into work mode,' said Tawnya, 54.
Paramedics arrived about five minutes later and cut off Chan's jacket and shirt to shock his heart with a defibrillator. Tawnya said she continued CPR until paramedics loaded Chan into an ambulance.
Tawnya is used to not knowing if all of her patients survive after they leave her care, but Tessa struggled with not knowing Chan's fate. That night, they got sugar cinnamon doughnut holes for comfort, but Tessa cried when she returned to her family's house in the Ottawa suburbs.
Meanwhile, Chan woke up in a hospital room on May 22 with no recollection of the entire day he collapsed. He used his smartwatch and phone to try to piece together what had happened.
Chan had a cardiac arrest due to a blocked artery in his heart, said Alexander Dick, Chan's cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.
'Within a few minutes, if you don't have some type of CPR, like chest compressions to circulate blood to the brain, you will start getting irreparable harm to the brain,' Dick said. People who experience a cardiac arrest typically die unless their heart is shocked back into a normal rhythm. About 90 percent of the time, a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital is fatal.
Chan underwent an angioplasty, a procedure to open narrowed or blocked arteries, Dick said.
Chan left the hospital on May 29 with a sore chest and left ribs. He walked about 10 minutes home, showered, drove to a pharmacy to pick up medicine and relaxed. But Chan didn't dwell on his life-threatening experience. He soon jumped back into his massage therapy classes at Ottawa's Algonquin College, worried about the days he missed.
In late June, Chan's girlfriend asked him about the people who helped him that night. That prompted Chan to turn to the Ottawa subreddit on June 25.
'I find out that I survived because someone had given me cpr and an ambulance came soon after,' Chan wrote. 'Just want to say thank you to that individual who saved me. Who knows what would have happened if the samaritan hadn't passed by.'
As the post quickly received hundreds of upvotes, Chan began to process how lucky he was to be alive. The post reached Tawnya's 24-year-old son, Joshua, who texted the family group chat: 'The person mom did CPR on survived.'
When Tessa checked her phone during a break at a youth volleyball camp where she was coaching, she cried. She and Joshua messaged Chan on Reddit and connected him with their mom.
Chan texted Tawnya: 'You literally saved my life in May.'
'I'm so glad you survived,' Tawnya replied. 'My daughter and I have been thinking about you.'
Chan got coffee with Tawnya, who told him what happened that night. Chan shared everything that happened to him since he regained consciousness.
With what he views as a second chance at life, Chan said, he plans to become a massage therapist and travel to Europe for the first time. Plus, he intends to stay in touch with Tawnya and her family.
'I owe them updates on my health … and any great things that I'm accomplishing in life,' Chan said. 'Because if they didn't save me, then I wouldn't be able to accomplish certain things.'
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