Paul Beatty operates Race Management Solutions, which every year stages back-to-back 5K races on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at Old Fort Niagara. The idea, Beatty said, is providing both a symbolic farewell and a new start.
He had no idea how the second race, on Monday, would wrap all of it together in a few unimaginably intense moments that turned three strangers into a lifesaving team on New Year’s Day.
Among the entrants on Jan. 1 were John and Paula Leszak, of Blasdell. Beatty is familiar with the couple, for a simple reason: They are among the most passionate runners in the region. In 2023, according to a “most active” list maintained at Buffalorunners.com, the Leszaks entered 116 road races, mainly 5Ks.
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That averages pretty close to a race every three days. Only Mac MacKenzie – who entered 138 races – was at the starting line more often last year than the Leszaks, throughout Western New York.
Prolific runners Paula and John Leszak on Goat Island, at the Jack O’Lantern Fall Classic in Niagara Falls. After going into cardiac arrest on Monday, John Leszak hopes to be on his feet again by March after triple bypass surgery.
That commitment’s easy to explain, said Paula Leszak, a nurse practitioner: “There isn’t anything a 4-mile run won’t make feel better.”
They were preparing for the race Monday, when Beatty shook John’s hand and took a photo of him in front of the Fort Niagara lighthouse. About 120 people signed up to run, and the Leszaks did what they always do at the start:
Paula, who started running in 2007, went a little bit ahead, while John – a 66-year-old stamp dealer and auctioneer who embraced running about eight years ago – settled in at a comfortable pace, near the back of the pack.
John had gone maybe two-tenths of a mile, Beatty said, when he made a sound of abrupt distress, and collapsed.
He went “right down,” said Marioly Corchado Ambrose, who was only a few steps behind him. Corchado Ambrose, a clinical research nurse at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, often takes part in races with her 16-year-old son Daniel, a swift runner who was already well into the course.
An image of John Leszak at the Old Fort Niagara lighthouse, just before Monday’s race, taken by race director Paul Beatty Jr.
She immediately knelt down and shifted John onto his side. His ear was turning purple – a sign, she said, that he had no heartbeat – and he was doing “agonal breathing,” reflexive gasping that’s not true breathing at all.
In all her years of nursing, this was one situation she’d never encountered. Corchado Ambrose instantly called upon her training: She started doing chest compressions, about 100 a minute, which was John’s only chance to survive until an emergency crew arrived.
Within seconds, as Corchado Ambrose worked, she was joined in that effort by two other nearby runners who by the best of possible chance were health professionals. Tina Sweeney and her husband, Colin, had entered the race with their little children, intentionally staying near the back so as not to slow down other runners. Colin had their older kids, Christian and Liam, in a double stroller, while Tina was pushing Theodore, their 1-year-old, when John went to the ground.
People shouted for someone to call 911, so Tina – a physician assistant at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station – pulled her phone from a stroller compartment and punched the number as she ran forward to help, her child in the stroller next to her.
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For a moment, Sweeney held up the phone – allowing the dispatcher to offer guidance on the pace of each new thrust – as Eileen Gramlich, too, dropped to her knees and started to help. Gramlich, a retired nurse who worked for years at Kenmore Mercy Hospital, had half-thought about not running the race – but she decided to do it anyway, part of a New Year’s goal of finishing at least one race a month.
She was maybe 10 feet away when John cried out, and she, Corchado Ambrose and Sweeney instantly formed an almost wordless three-person bond as they took turns at compressions, which sustain at least some blood flow to the brain.
Race organizer Paul Beatty: The best start to the New Year was learning John Leszak would be all right.
That teamwork matters: The pace and ferocity is hard for one person to maintain for long, and it took about 10 minutes for emergency responders to arrive. As they worked, John’s wife, Paula – alerted by another runner, Patty Wagner – sprinted back to help, alternating rescue breaths as these women she’d never met tried to save her husband’s life.
State police arrived about 12:15 p.m., onlookers say, which was almost simultaneous with State Park Police giving John’s heart a jolt with an AED, or defibrillator paddles.
The first attempt didn’t create a stable heartbeat. At that point, the rescuers say, John Moulin – another runner with CPR training – jumped in to help with compressions, just before an emergency crew from the Youngstown Volunteer Fire Co. used an AED to shock John’s heart twice more.
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After the second time, Gramlich said, “there was a rhythm, and he’s breathing on his own.”
The volunteers transported John to Mount St. Mary’s Hospital, while Paula received a ride there from state police. “His heart was beating and he was breathing,” Paula said of her husband, who’d soon be transferred again to Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo.
By Wednesday, he was offering this Facebook message:
“I want to take a moment to thank the angels who immediately gave me cardiac compressions when I went down,” John wrote. “The docs all say that’s what saved my life.”
He wrote that he will undergo triple bypass surgery Thursday at Mercy, and a guy who’d been at such risk on New Year’s Day laid out this dream: “My goal is to walk the Shamrock Run,” referring to the well-loved March race through Buffalo’s Old First Ward.
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Paula said she’s profoundly grateful for all the emergency responders, and for John’s care at both Mount St. Mary’s and Mercy. She gives thanks that her husband’s a dogged runner, because she believes it gave him a better chance by strengthening his heart – and when it finally did fail, it happened in exactly the right place, at the right time.
The Youngstown Volunteer Fire emergency crew returned afterward to thank the runners who stepped in to help, and Paula made a point of calling each of them, with gratitude for the greatest of all gifts:
“It’s just a miraculous outcome,” she said.
Dr. David Feldman, director of cardiovascular services for Catholic Health in Buffalo, reinforced that sense of appreciative awe: According to 79 studies that he said covered about 150,000 patients, the chances of being resuscitated after full cardiac arrest outside a hospital are just beyond 7%.
Those chances climb significantly, to 17%, if it’s a “witnessed arrest,” Feldman said – a statistic underlined by the survival of Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who collapsed a year ago on the field in Cincinnati.
It was emphasized again by John Leszak, and the skilled “witnesses” who stepped up with such focused split-second grace.
After the race: Tina Sweeney, far left, and Eileen Gramlich, far right, with members of the lifesaving team from the Youngstown Fire Co.: from left, Jeremy Ringvelski, Susan Burrows, Andrew Hanna and Tim Fogarty,
Feldman joined every principal in the Fort Niagara rescue in making this point: There’s no understating the value of knowing CPR, with the race a kind of ultimate statement on the reality that you never know when such knowledge will help keep someone alive.
As for Sweeney and Gramlich, once the ambulance pulled away, they decided they still wanted to run the course. Gramlich “had to clear my mind,” she said, always one of the best paybacks of running.
She used that clarity to think of what just happened, and to say a lot of prayers for John.
Corchado Ambrose had to hunt down her 16-year-old, Daniel, who didn’t know what had occurred behind him until he reached the finish line. Mother and son headed home to contemplate the new year and all that lies ahead, goals that took on a fresh perspective once Paula Leszak called to say her husband would be OK.
“My gosh,” said Corchado Ambrose, who on Jan. 1 helped a stranger in crisis to start breathing again. “Right out the door in 2024, and everything I want gets checked right off.”
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at skirst@buffnews.com.