Off-duty Bartow County 911 dispatcher Tim Prather saved the life of a man who suffered a potentially deadly heart attack at Ming’s Moon restaurant in Cartersville.
It had been a rough week for Prather at work so, at the encouragement of his wife and 8-year-old daughter, he took the night off to enjoy a nice family dinner out on the town.
When the family entered the restaurant, a man held the door open for them. Prather then held the next set of doors for the man, joking, “I like to pay my favors back.” Little did they know a bigger favor was in store.
As his family started for the buffet, Prather said he spotted a waitress turn a corner with a large set of plates that suddenly all crashed to the floor.
“Somebody started hollering, ‘Call 911! Call 911!’ I thought it was my daughter, and I took off up there,” he said. “But when I got up there, this gentleman was laid down on the floor with a blank stare, eyes wide open.”
It was the man who’d held the door. Prather said he had no thoughts, his training just kicked in and he began to rub the unresponsive man’s sternum. That wasn’t enough, so he switched to chest compressions for three to seven minutes.
“All of a sudden he gasped for air,” Prather said.
By the time paramedics showed up, he was finally able to get the man to breathe on his own. Because he got to the man so quickly, bystanders said it saved the man’s life.
“When I sat down at the table with my wife and my daughter, my daughter looked at me and said ‘My daddy, my hero.’ That’s when I lost it,” Prather reflected. “I’m not a hero, but I want to be a hero to my daughter.”
The man’s pacemaker had shorted out, and he had a heart attack. Less than 5% of people who have this type of heart attack survive, Prather was told.
Doctors put the man into a medically induced coma to check for any severe head injuries. Since he woke up, Prather and his wife have been checking on his status.
When the two men talked on the phone for the first time since the incident, they both broke down in tears.
The man is recovering well, and even started working this past week. Prather said he saw him enjoying the sun and doing the crossword puzzles he gave him in the hospital.
“All I did was react to the situation,” he said. “I was really and truly at the right place at the right time.”