Grandpa Tracks Down Nurse Practitioner Who Helped Save His Life When He Had a Heart Attack Near Her Mid-Flight

A 77-year-old grandpa has tracked down the stranger who helped save his life after he had a heart attack on a recent flight — and it turns out she’s a nurse practitioner.

On Wednesday, July 29, Patrick McGee was on a Southwest Airlines flight from Omaha, Neb., to Phoenix, when he suddenly experienced a major medical emergency and woke up in the hospital. 

McGee told local NBC affiliate KPNX that he later learned that he had a heart attack before one of his fellow passengers jumped into action and saved his life by administering CPR until he was taken to a hospital to receive additional care. 

“I owe this person a great deal,” he told the outlet — making it his mission to find the woman. “I have a son, grandkids, wife, brothers and I’m still here with them because of her.”

Nearly a week after the incident occurred mid-flight, McGee successfully found nurse practitioner Kaitlyn Louchheim, whose quick actions saved his life. 

“He was meant to have more time,” Louchheim told KYMA. “I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time.”

After all, Louchheim wasn’t initially planning on taking that particular flight, according to the outlet. She switched her ticket at the last minute when an earlier flight home on her daughter’s birthday became available.

“There’s no words you can really say, I mean, I was gone,” McGee emphasized of her heroic actions. “They said I was dead and brought back.”

As for how the incident actually went down? When retired critical care nurse Lora Holton, a fellow passenger, noticed that McGee was experiencing a medical emergency, she immediately started CPR. 

“I was scared...I was scared for him,” she recalled to KYMA. “You have a lot of adrenaline, and you just do what you’re trained to do and hopefully try to help save someone.”

After a while, Louchheim took over to perform deep compressions on McGee while having to “sit on top” of him to account for the narrow aisles.

“We could see the rise and fall in his abdomen and then he kind of flickered open his eyes,” Louchheim said, to which Holton added, “Everyone was so excited, beside ourselves. It was really emotional and then he actually opened his eyes.”

Once McGee made it to the hospital, Louchheim was left wondering what happened to him — until she heard that he was searching for her on KPNX.

Describing their over-the-phone reunion as a “very emotional moment,” Louchheim recalled McGee saying, “ ‘You are my angel, I’m so thankful for you.’ ”

“Things that are meant to happen are going to happen,” she told KYMA. “And if you have a chance to do the right thing you can’t think about it, you just have to do it.”