Danya Topham had just arrived at the baseball field after completing a shift at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, where she works as a registered nurse, when Darren Ewell collapsed. She immediately ran to him and began chest compressions.
A Utah nurse is being hailed a hero for springing into action at her son’s softball game to save the life of a man who collapsed from a heart attack.
Danya Topham had just arrived at the baseball field after completing a shift at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, where she works as a registered nurse, when she heard someone yell.
“I immediately looked out and I had that straight shot to where Darren was laying and so I jumped up and then I just booked it out there,” she told Inside Edition.
Darren Ewell had suffered a massive heart attack while playing softball, and Topham was unable to find his pulse.
Topham immediately began chest compressions on the field, frightened that she was not going to be able to save him.
“I don't have my doctors, I don't have my nurses. I don't have oxygen, I don't have medications, I had nothing,” she said. “It was frightening.”
Murray City Police Officer Brian Bybee was the first to respond to the 911 call made after Ewell collapsed.
“When I got out of the car, Danya was on top of him performing CPR and I could see that she was tired, and so I took over CPR from there,” Bybee told Inside Edition.
Topham was almost certain the stricken man wasn't going to make it.
“My eyes just filled with tears, and I was so, just sad because I really didn't think he had a chance,” she said.
More emergency responders then arrived on the scene. Paramedics used a defibrillator to shock the dying man's heart before rushing him to the hospital.
Ewell needed four stents to be put into his heart, but he survived what he said could have very likely killed him.
After returning to the baseball field after his heart attack, he told Inside Edition, “The doctor told me if I had my heart attack at any other place, including possibly my home, I’d be dead. But I had it right there in front of a nurse who just barely arrived at the ballfield, and she saved my life.”
It was there that Ewell also reunited with Topham, who he thanked for saving his life.
“She is my guardian angel because she saved my life and I would love to give her a hug right now,” he said before embracing Topham. “Thank you so much.”
