Right place, right time?

November 10, 2011 8:00 PM

Right place, right time?

The recent video of two Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners thwarting a hotel robbery made me want to hear about other "right place, right time" situations. What are some of the best stories/videos/articles about people coming forward with the right skill set or training to save the day?

One of my family's stories is somewhat related - many years ago my grandfather was visiting San Francisco. He was checking into the hotel when he had a heart attack and collapsed in the lobby, on the other side of which was a group of cardiologists in town for a conference. They intervened, he survived, and lived another 30 years.

posted by allseeingabstract to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

KPCC had a story this morning about a man who stopped to help a couple of women with a flat tire. Then he drove on. When they got restarted, they drove past his care at the side of the road, where he was having a heart attack. Called 911, started CPR, saved his little good Samaritan life.

This probably won't stay here, cuz it's probably sort of chat filter. but I thought it was a great story when I heard it today.
posted by SLC Mom at 8:17 PM on November 10, 2011

A high school football player suffered sudden cardiac arrest but was revived thanks to parents in the stands -- a cardiologist, a couple of anesthetists, and his own parents, who were the first to do CPR (and are themselves doctors, I think) -- and an external defibrillator which had been donated a few years earlier.
posted by katemonster at 8:19 PM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

In 1995, an out-of-control drunk on a transatlantic flight was subdued by a Greco-Roman wrestler.
posted by umbú at 8:34 PM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Men in black are the white knights of the night.
posted by malibustacey9999 at 8:50 PM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

First two stories that come to mind are:
Marine home on leave thwarts bank robbery.
German bodybuilders save driver stuck in ditch.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:06 AM on November 11, 2011

(And that hotel clerk is either the most casual, accommodating robbery victim ever, or he's just had lots of experience.)
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:12 AM on November 11, 2011

If you'll accept a family anecdote, in the same vein as your grandfather: my sister and her family were visiting friends; my then-4-year-old nephew chinned himself on a cider press so he could get a bettter view of what was happening inside it. The press caught & cut off the tip of one of his fingers. The family they were visiting rushed to the rescue --- both parents were doctors, one son was an EMT, another was a med student and former Navy hospital corpsman, and the daughter was a pediatric nurse with extensive emergency room experience.
posted by easily confused at 2:10 AM on November 11, 2011

In a similar vein to your grandfather's story, here are two links about a man who suffered a heart attack at the finish line of the recent Baltimore Marathon. He was revived by paramedics and other EMT-trained runners and taken to a state-of-the-art cardiac care facility for follow-up care. He had the good fortune to have his heart attack just before the finish line, where all these trained professionals were stationed.
posted by cheapskatebay at 6:15 AM on November 11, 2011

Radiolab did an ep about Goodness/Altruism and it included a bit on people who've won a Carnegie award for heroic acts. One guy in particular who jumped onto a subway track to save a guy who passed out or had a seizure or something and wound up underneath the subway alive with the guy mentioned feeling he was destined to be there to save the guy's life bc earlier he'd been spared from death by a gun to the head (out of bullets) and had wondered why God spared him. All the other heroic folks on the show mention the whole "I happened to be the one there so I did what needed to be done" feeling too.
posted by ifjuly at 5:10 AM on November 12, 2011

Link the Radiolab episode mentioned above. Thanks for posting, I hadn't heard it.
posted by nenequesadilla at 4:49 PM on November 14, 2011