Cardiac Arrest Survivor Meets Good Samaritan Who Saved Her Life

WICKER PARK — In an emotional reunion on Friday, a 35-year-old mother who made a full recovery after suffering from cardiac arrest while walking down a Wicker Park side street met the Good Samaritan who doctors say saved her life.

The reunion came during an awards ceremony honoring the bystanders and emergency responders who worked together to save Brittany Carminati, a South Loop resident and IT consultant.

Carminati was walking to the CTA "L" station after an appointment in Wicker Park on Sept. 30, 2014. 

Iris Vazquez was in the passenger seat as her mother, Vilma Torres, drove down the 1400 block of North Bell Avenue.

"I looked out the window and saw [Carminati] slumped against the fence. I said, 'Mom, something's not right with that lady.'" Vazquez, 26, recalled.

Torres put the car in reverse and Vazquez, who works as a medical assistant in Lakeview, rushed to Carminati's aid. After laying her on the ground, she began administering CPR.

Vazquez performed the compressions for what she said "felt like forever."

Becky Ball, a banker who lives across the street from Sabin School, was parking her car when she saw Vazquez run over to Carminati.

"She was amazing ...  she was talking to 911 while doing CPR," said Ball, who also joined the reunion at an awards ceremony

"It was a rush of so many emotions," said Ball. "[Carminati] had blood coming out of her nose and was unconscious."

Then emergency personnel arrived.

"I was nervous and broke down as soon as they put her in the ambulance," Vazquez said. "We were standing there screaming, 'Take her to the hospital, take her!'"

Inside the ambulance, paramedics worked to restart Carminati's heart, explained Dr. Black, an emergency room physician at Presence Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center.

"We get a lot of [patients] who are brain dead.  What made her recover, what saved her life, was you," Black said after Vazquez and Ball received Community Hero Awards in the hospital's auditorium, 1127 N. Oakley St.

According to a detailed post on the hospital's website, Carminati's heart had stopped beating for 10 minutes and it was the ongoing chest compressions given by Vazquez that kept blood flowing to her brain.

Black said the patient survival rate after a cardiac arrest that's experienced outside of a hospital is "very low," around 6 percent. Even fewer have a full recovery like Carminati did because their brain cells die quickly from a lack of oxygen.

Now pregnant with her second child, Carminati cried as she was reunited with the first responders while holding her daughter Siri's hand. Carminati said she was thinking of what would have happened if her then-18-month-old daughter had to grow up without her mother.

"This is surreal. To think a hospital would go to all this trouble to bring us all together, it is incredible," Carminati said.

In addition to Vazquez and Bell, Chicago Fire Department paramedics John Franta and Joe Johnson, Shakespeare District police officer David Alcazar and the doctors and nurses who aided Carminati also received Community Hero awards, presented by hospital officials.

An especially poignant coincidence for the Carminati family was that Vazquez shares the same name as Carminati's mother-in-law, Iris Carminati, who passed away in a tragic accident several years ago.

Wiping away tears, Vazquez said, "I almost never look out the window like I did [that day]. Your mother was watching."

"Brittany's Story," a video re-enactment of the incident, was also shown at the gathering. 

Not a dry eye in the house... @ChicagoCAPS14 pic.twitter.com/OYJwDKI7AX

— Alisa Hauser (@DNA_WPB) December 18, 2015

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