The Bainbridge Island Fire Department honored four people for their swift, life-saving action to help a man who had a heart attack after summiting a big Bainbridge Island hill during this year’s Chilly Hilly bike ride.

Brian Moran and his family were in attendance Thursday evening to thank Patrick Rugh, Joe Kimzey, Roger Chan and Johnny Walker for jumping into action when Moran collapsed. They administered CPR within seconds of his collapse, and kept working until medics arrived.

Washington State Ferries held a ferry for medics to speed his transportation to Harborview in Seattle. Thanks to fast action from emergency responders and these four people being prepared and trained in CPR, a tragedy was averted.

From Inside Bainbridge:

After summiting Halls Hill, approximately three-fourths of the way along the challenging 33-mile Chilly Hilly route, rider Brian Moran collapsed onto the roadway, his heart stopped. As luck would have it, riders trained in CPR were seconds behind him. Patrick Rugh, an EMT from Tacoma, and Joe Kimzey, the brother of a Bainbridge firefighter, spotted the fallen cyclist and immediately went to work administering CPR.

Moments later, cardiologist Roger Chan, who told me he was lagging behind his pack of riders from Olympia, topped the hill, saw Moran on the ground, and joined the rescue effort.

While BIFD emergency responders struggled to move through the throngs of Chilly Hilly riders, Rugh, Kimzey, and Chan worked together to keep life-saving oxygen flowing to Moran’s brain. Cardiologist Chan explained that having three people working on chest compressions and carotid pulse monitoring made the work far more efficient than if just one or two people had been administering CPR.

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