Survivor Day Celebrates Lives Saved in 2024

Jack Luck was a strapping 18-year-old with a new job as a bank customer service representative and a passion for kickboxing when he suddenly went into cardiac arrest while at home talking to his dad one evening.

The nearly fatal attack came out of the blue. Jack hadn’t been feeling well February 8, 2024, but he was otherwise healthy. He was standing in the kitchen chatting with his dad in the next room when he suddenly passed out.

Darren Luck rushed to his son, who revived. Darren gave him an ice pack and towel to absorb the blood coming from the back of his head. He got Jack to a couch. They checked his blood pressure and blood glucose level. They were fine, and Jack insisted he was OK. Not long afterwards, his breathing became laboured. He grabbed his chest and passed out again. This time his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he stopped breathing. He had no pulse.

Essex-Windsor EMS paramedics Dawn Hodges and Ljubisa Apostolovski were at the house within minutes of the family calling 911. They were able to resuscitate Jack and restore his pulse after taking numerous measures. Then they rushed him to hospital, where his condition was stabilized and his recovery began.

Jack was among 26 survivors and those who helped save them whose stories were shared during the Essex-Windsor EMS and Southwest Ontario Regional Base Hospital Program 12th Annual Survivor Day. The event, held May 23, 2025, at the St. Clair Centre for the Arts, celebrated survivors of trauma and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in 2024.

Essex-Windsor EMS paramedics provided life-saving resuscitative interventions to 373 patients in 2024. The 26 cases celebrated at Survivor Day highlight how the quick, informed actions of those on the scene and the medical skills of paramedics can save lives.

“Saving lives is a team effort,” said Essex-Windsor EMS Chief Justin Lammers. “We are extremely proud of the way our highly skilled paramedics work in tandem with each other and ambulance communications officers to try to ensure the best possible outcome when lives are at stake. We are immensely grateful to the public safety personnel who assist us and our hospital partners, who play a huge role in helping survivors survive. We also couldn’t succeed without members of the public stepping up.”

One of them is Brandon Brown, who performed CPR on his mother, Tammy Brown, after she collapsed in the bathroom in the early morning hours of May 21, 2024.

Alerted by his father and without his glasses on, he rushed to his parents’ apartment in the basement of his house and had his wife call 911. He managed to flip Tammy over and did CPR until firefighters arrived to take over. They were followed by paramedics, who were able to get Tammy’s pulse back and rush her to hospital. Tammy spent a month in hospital and is continuing to recover.

The Survivor Day cases acknowledged at the May 23 ceremony involved 63 paramedics, 69 firefighters, nine ambulance communications officers, seven Canada Border Services Agency officers and 23 civilians who assisted. Several of the paramedics, firefighters and ambulance communications officers were involved in more than one case.

During the ceremony, the survivors who attended were presented with rolled up and bottled printouts of their heart rhythms taken by paramedics. Those involved in saving them were presented with Essex-Windsor EMS “save” pins.

Read all of the Survivor Day stories.