Bill Garner believes in angels. 

On May 10, Bill, encountered three real-life angels who helped save his brother’s life right on the side of Woodville Road.

On that morning, Bill and his brother Jim, both of Toledo, had been helping a family friend clear out a barn on Camper Road in Genoa.

“We had been working for about an hour when Jim said he wasn’t feeling well,” Bill said. “As I was getting stuff ready to put in the truck to haul away, Jim went up to rest in the loft.

Bill Garner, right, is grateful to the three women who stopped to offer aid on Woodville Road when his brother Jim, left, was having a heart attack May 10th.

“When he said he thought maybe he should go get checked out, I was concerned – for him to admit that, that would take a lot,” Bill said.

As the brothers were traveling down Woodville Road in Jim’s green Dodge Dakota pickup truck, Bill noticed that Jim, who was driving, was unusually quiet.

“We were just past Samsen Furniture on SR 51 when I noticed the truck was slowing down and drifting to the right,” Bill said.

“I had been looking out of the passenger window and when I looked over to the driver’s seat, my brother’s face was turning purple, his eyes were really wide and he was gasping for air,” Bill said.

“He was unresponsive – slumped back in the seat, looking straight up,” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday – it’s an image I can’t get out of my mind.

“Luckily, Jim is not a very fast driver, or we may have gotten into an accident,” Bill said.

After grabbing the wheel and steering the truck to the side of the road, Bill opened the door and removed his brother’s seatbelt.

“I was trying to shake him to see if I could get him to at least come to, but he didn’t,” he recalled.

Bill called 9-1-1, but the call was initially routed through Sandusky. “I told them I was in Ottawa County in Clay Township, and the call was rerouted and paramedics were dispatched,” he said.

“I was getting frantic – I didn’t know CPR and really didn’t know what to do,” Bill said.

Then the first of the brothers’ three angels arrived in a red pickup truck. “She asked what was happening, and then she started trying to revive my brother,” Bill said.

Then another woman pulled over to help. “She said she was a nurse at St. Vs,” Bill said. “She did CPR right there on the road.”

Shortly after, another woman stopped to offer her assistance.

“I was a frantic mess, but those three women just kept going,” Bill said. “I did what I could do to help, but they kept my brother going until the ambulance showed up.”

When the rescue squad arrived, they used the defibrillator twice before Bill heard them say they had gotten a stable heart rhythm.

“The last thing the paramedic said when they were loading my brother up was ‘keep your fingers crossed and say a lot of prayers,’” Bill said.

Despite the confusion, Bill thanked the three women and headed for the hospital, though he encountered some confusion as to just where his brother was taken.

“The ambulance took Jim to the cardiac unit at St. Vs, where he underwent a procedure to unblock an artery that was 100 percent blocked,” Bill said. “The doctor called what he had the ‘widow-maker. He said 90 percent of people who have that don’t make it.

“He doctor looked at my brother, shook his head and said, ‘There’s no reason why you’re here right now,’” Bill said.

“When the doctor said I should be commended for saving my brother’s life, I looked at him and said, ‘It wasn’t me. Had it not been for those three women, I would have been planning a funeral,’” Bill said.

At St. Vs, the family had an opportunity to thank nurse Kris Keaton. They also learned the name of one of the other “angels,” April Hamrick. “Apparently they were acquaintances, somehow,” Bill said.

“When thanking Kris, she told me something that really struck me,” Bill said. “She said she normally takes Clay Center Road, but for some reason, that day she decided to go on Woodville Road – that something was telling her to go that way.”

Today, Bill is grateful that Jim is on the mend, but the Garner family would very much like the chance to thank the third woman who stopped to help. 

“She told me her name, but with everything that was going on, I just can’t remember,” Bill said. “I can’t even remember what kind of car she was driving.

“It’s really important to us to find her so we can thank her for what she did,” he added.
 
Bill Garner (right) is grateful to the three women who stopped to offer aid on Woodville Road when his brother Jim (left) was having a heart attack May 10.

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