NORFOLK, Va — Recently, a Good Samaritan raced to save the life of a man having a heart attack. On Saturday, the two met for the first time since the incident.
Michael Johnson, of Norfolk, says he suffered a heart attack on Good Friday while walking on the Granby High School track.
Wendy Graefe a complete stranger ran to the rescue administering CPR for five to six minutes until the paramedics arrived.
All Johnson remembers is waking up in a hospital.
"When I woke up, I heard all these stories about how this lady saved my life and everything so I wanted to meet her," said Johnson.
On Saturday, the two of them met.
When we sat down with Johnson and his savior, he told News 3 that he didn't think he would be here today without her.
"She's an angel," said Johnson.
Graefe thinks she was just at the right place at the right time.
"That day I did several errands after work that I wouldn't normally do those are places I don't ever go and then I took a way home that I never go," explains Graefe.
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Wendy says she stopped her car after noticing two people looking distraught on the phone.
"I wiped my car around I saw a fella on the ground and I ran around," explained Graefe. "He wasn't breathing and didn't have a pulse so I started CPR on him,"
Graeffe is a certified nurse midwife and has been trained in CPR for years, but this was the first time she had to perform it on a grown man vs an infant.
"It was interesting that I had never done it before but all the things I knew clicked it," said Graefe.
She thinks it is a skill everyone should learn because it can be the difference between life and death.
"At the time I thought about ultimately if that were me would I want somebody to do that," said Graefe.
Whether or not it was fate that brought Mike and Wendy together, one thing is for certain, their forever friendship.
