Two men save Redmond woman's life on local trail

KOMO NEWS.COM :  Karen McClure thanks Ruchir Astavans
and Nichsant Kumar for saving her life after she collapsed
while running on a bike trail. 

Miracle on the hiking trail: 2 men save woman's life,  By Lindsay Cohen, KOMO NEWS.COM:

REDMOND, Wash. - Forty-five minutes is a long time to be without a pulse.

Paramedics aren’t sure if that’s how long Karen McClure was unconscious; they know it was likely longer.

"I’ve forgotten everything that day and the day before," said the Redmond mother of two. "I think my short-term memory was wiped out."

No one is quite sure what led up to the moments when McClure was found - face down, pale, and blue - on a hiking trail May 19 in Redmond. The two men who found her – longtime friends and Microsoft employees – weren’t sure what was wrong with McClure, an avid runner, when they first spotted her from a few feet away. Read More >>

"It was a bright and sunny day, so the first reaction was, 'Hmm. Someone just lying down?'" said Nishant Kumar of Redmond. "And then we realized it was someone in distress."

“Your heart’s beating fast and you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’” added Ruchir Astavans, who was with Kumar that day. "There honestly wasn’t that much time to think about anything else."

Astavans dialed 911, where dispatchers instructed him on how to perform "hands-only" CPR. Kumar ran the quarter-mile out to a nearby road to wait for paramedics arrive.

When they did, another half-dozen people did CPR on McClure until her heart beat on its own. She’s still sore from the thousands of chest compressions – and surgery to implant a defibrillator in her chest.

On Saturday – after a couple of weeks in the hospital, and walks now measured in yards, instead of miles – McClure met the people who saved her life for the first time. Kumar handed her flowers – and a hug.
“I can’t say thank you enough to them,” McClure remarked. “I’m hoping to pay it forward and help somebody else.”

“They are the ones that really saved your life,” added Skip Boylan, a Redmond firefighter and paramedic.

“We feel really blessed, really fortunate that we were at the right place,” Kumar said. “I think anybody would’ve done the same thing.”

“It definitely feels good,” continued Astavans. “It feels good to have been able to save someone’s life and to say that.”

By Linday Cohen,
KOMO NEWS.COM, 6/19/11