John Gallagher prayed for help — not for himself, but for the disoriented young woman he held after she was suffering what he thought might be a stroke.
Seconds felt like minutes after Gallagher, an equipment operator with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, pulled over behind the woman’s car after noticing it stopped on the narrow shoulder in the westbound construction zone just east of the Downingtown interchange.
As Gallagher and co-worker Doug Sarver approached the car, it was obvious the motorist was in distress.
“She was trying to get out of the vehicle at first when we first pulled up to her,” Sarver said. “Her eyes were rolled in the back of her head and then she’d look at us like she was scared of us.”
Gallagher called the turnpike’s dispatch center in Highspire, Dauphin County, and requested an ambulance and a state trooper.
In the meantime, he got into the driver’s side as best he could, facing her while using the door jamb as a seat.
“I just held the back of her neck to keep it straight and was rubbing her back, saying, ‘Everything’s OK,’” Gallagher said, “and I was praying: ‘Please, God, have them get here fast. Someone show up, please, anybody.’”
‘I was nosey’
Just then, a car stopped on the shoulder in front of them. Gallagher thought it might be a member of the woman’s family, but it turned out to be the answer to his prayers.
Cindy Zimmerman, an emergency room nurse, ran up just as the woman passed out in Gallagher’s arms. She told him that she is a nurse and just happened to be passing by.
“She’s like, ‘What do we got?’ And I said, ‘She just collapsed,’” Gallagher recalled. “She (Zimmerman) reached over to check her pulse, and she goes, ‘I don’t have a pulse.’”
Zimmerman was returning home to Spring Township about 2:15 p.m. on Dec. 10 after her shift in the emergency department of Temple Health — Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia.
She noticed a car stopped on the side of the road. Just ahead of that was a Turnpike Commission vehicle.
“I looked over, mostly because I was nosey, and I noticed a person slumped over in the car,” she said. “A man was sitting in the car with his back against the steering wheel, holding her up. That just didn’t look right to me.”
She wasn’t sure if she should stop, but then her instincts as a medical professional took over.
Zimmerman told Gallagher to lower the back of the driver’s seat, and she quickly assessed the patient, now flat on her back.
“She was doing what I call agonal breathing — she was breathing but wasn’t getting much air,” Zimmerman recalled. “She was guppy breathing. Even with her lying flat, I couldn’t find a pulse. I started doing CPR.”
She confirmed with the worker that an ambulance had been called.
A basic life support unit pulled up, and she informed the crew that the patient was in cardiac arrest.
BLS service stabilizes a patient, while advanced life support actively treats life-threatening conditions with advanced skills and equipment.
“It looked like she was having a seizure,” Zimmerman said. “Once they got her into the ambulance, she started to come around a little bit.”
A firetruck and a second ambulance — an ALS unit — arrived along with a trooper.
Meanwhile, vehicles passed through the cattle chute within a few feet of the workers and the good Samaritan.
Two things about the turnpike workers struck Zimmerman. On one hand, they were unfazed by the proximity of vehicular traffic. On the other hand, Gallagher, in particular, was very emotional about what had just transpired.
“He kept saying, ‘I just didn’t want her to die,’” she said, “and I looked up and saw tears in his eyes, and he hugged me. It just made my day.”
“I lost my brother not too long ago,” Gallagher explained, “and that’s all I kept thinking was because Christmas was coming up, New Year’s was coming up. This is someone’s mother, sister, wife, aunt.”
Helping motorists
Gallagher and Sarver aren’t assigned to the turnpike’s GEICO Safety Patrol. Those roles are filled by other people in their department who hold the job title of maintenance utility worker. They patrol the road to assist with flat tires and other road emergencies.
Workers have helped deliver a baby along the turnpike as well as getting stray animals off the road, turnpike spokeswoman Marissa Orbanek said.
Turnpike customers can get help by dialing *11, which connects the caller to the dispatch center.
“We do have 24/7 coverage, so drivers are never alone when they’re on the turnpike,” Orbanek said.
Sometimes animals even need to be rescued.
“We had a horse running loose on the turnpike,” Gallagher recalled, “and a few of our guys had to try to corral him and push him back up to the hill off the road.”
‘Heroes that day’
Gallagher and Sarver were returning to their home base — the maintenance Devault Maintenance Shed in Charlestown Township, Chester County — when they came upon the woman in distress in what they refer to as the Malvern section.
COURTESY OF CINDY ZIMMERMAN
Cindy Zimmerman of Spring Township, who works as an emergency department nurse in Temple Health – Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, stopped along the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Dec. 10 to render aid to a motorist suffering a serious medical episode. (COURTESY OF CINDY ZIMMERMAN)
Zimmerman believes she would not have had the opportunity to perform the life-saving intervention had Gallagher and Sarver not stopped moments earlier to come to her aid.
“I’m a nurse for 35 years,” she said. “I was just really thankful they stopped because she was trying to get out of the car. We were in a work zone. If she had gotten out, she would have been hit. She would have gone right into that traffic. No doubt.
“They were the heroes that day. They did such a great job making sure she was safe.”
Gallagher said he’s just glad the story has a happy ending. From what he understands, the woman is going to survive.
“God bless Cindy,” he said of Zimmerman. “You know, she came at the right time. I mean, that was my guardian angel because she showed up right when she collapsed. And she’s that lady’s guardian angel, too.”