A little more than a month ago, on a Thursday afternoon, Chris Cole and his fiancee, Pam, decided to head over to the Home Depot for a little shopping.
Instead of going to the one closest to their Arvada home, they decided to travel to the one on West 88th Avenue in Westminster.
“I really don’t know why,” Chris Cole, 46, said in an interview.
Arnold and Mary Asay’s daughter, Marilyn, and her husband, Steve Fitzgerald, had just gotten into town from St. Louis. Arnold and Steve that afternoon decided to fix the bottom step of the basement stairs. Instead of the Arvada Home Depot, they, too, went to the one in Westminster.
Chris Cole remembers Arnold and Steve being directly behind him and Pam in the check-out line. He didn’t think anything of it until he got to his car.
“We were loading up and just about to head out when it happened,” he said.
There was a loud thud. He heard someone scream and shout, “Help!”
“Call 911!” Chris Cole shouted to the crowd that was gathering.
Arnold Asay, 77, was collapsed on the ground. Cole felt for a pulse. There was none. He pressed in for a heartbeat. Nothing.
He began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
“I was trained in CPR many years ago — I think it was 1986 or ’87 — and it all came back to me,” he said. “It’s not that difficult to do, but it is difficult to do correctly.”
Cole worked on the man for what seemed like forever, but in reality was about 10 minutes before the paramedics arrived.
Arnold Asay was not responding.
“I think we might be losing him,” Cole heard one of the technicians say.
“I’m not going to let him die,” Steve Fitzgerald heard the man say before working even harder.
There was a pulse.
“If it was not for him . . .” Mary Asay said. “The more I reflect on it, I think he was put on this earth to save my husband’s life.”
It was congestive heart failure, possibly caused by a virus, the doctors said.
They initially told Mary Asay it would be a miracle if Arnold survived another 48 hours.
Arnold Asay rallied and is home now, a new defibrillator keeping his heartbeat in rhythm. He is much better, his wife said. Baby steps, little by little, is how she described it.
“If that doctor who told me 48 hours could see him now, I think he would be in shock.”
The good Samaritan hero in such stories usually disappears promptly, unnamed and unthanked.
Mary Asay got Chris Cole’s name and number from the paramedics. She called him. Where was he? She wanted to thank him personally. He told her.
“You are on my street!” Mary said.
Chris and Pam, it turned out, live just up the street from Arnold and Mary’s home on a cul-de-sac.
The couples now visit or chat by phone at least once or twice a week.
Cole said he feels humbled by it.
Mary Asay sees it slightly differently.
“I think it was meant to be that Chris was there at that particular moment. He could have still been in the store shopping, or he could have gone to the other store.
“But he was there, and he saved Arnold. It has formed a very special friendship between us all.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
