An elderly woman is alive thanks to the teamwork of a retired emergency room doctor and an Acworth police officer. The two performed CPR on the 74-year-old woman when she collapsed at a QT parking lot on Cobb Parkway in Acworth on Monday afternoon.
Dr. William Zorn was in Acworth from his home in Watkinsville to fill in at the Synergy Medical Center. As he was leaving, he saw an elderly woman collapsed in the parking lot. He sprang in to help her. Minutes later, Cpl. Luke Reynolds of the Acworth Police Department arrived to help.
Dashcam video from Reynolds' vehicle shows Zorn finishing the Heimlich maneuver and then transitioning to CPR on the 74-year-old woman.
"It was serious. I mean I couldn't find a pulse and that's usually a bad sign," said Zorn in a phone interview. "Then the police officer came up and helped with the respiration."
The woman's horrified husband watched as Zorn compressed her chest and Reynolds performed mouth to mouth.
"He called her Marge, so I said, ‘Marge can you hear me? Marge, nod if you can hear me,'" said Reynolds.
Reynolds says he kept calling her name until about four minutes into the CPR
"It was amazing. She just started kind of moaning a little bit and just a little bit of a cough and then her eyes started moving," said Reynolds.
He says her pulse had returned but she wasn't out of the woods yet.
Reynolds says it took the ambulance about eight minutes to arrive. He said that it seemed a lot longer while trying to save someone's life.
"Eight or nine minutes felt like 20 minutes, you know," said Reynolds.
The woman was rushed to the hospital after the apparent heart attack. Zorn said it appears that she'll be OK after he and Reynolds saved her life.
"I've gotten third-hand information that she is back home," said Zorn.
"We were able to basically do our job. That's what we're there for," said Reynolds.
The Acworth Police Department did not release the woman's name but says they hope to reunite her with Zorn and Reynolds at a later date.
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Dashcam video shows a doctor and a police officer spring into action after an elderly woman collapsed.
Cpl. Luke Reynolds helped save an elderly woman's life.
