Jeff Zeiger's heart stopped beating at Cascade Lake. It couldn't have happened at a better place

On Oct. 28, 2023, Jeff Zeiger's heart went into cardiac arrest while exercising along the bike path at Cascade Lake.

Zeiger calls it one of the best things that ever happened to him.

"I think everybody should have a cardiac arrest or death experience — and wake up from it," he said.

Zeiger is quirky in that way, but it adds to his story. The operative phrase is the last part. Zeiger just turned 69. The average life span for an American male is mid- to late 70s. Zeiger understands the math, that life beyond a certain point brings diminishing returns, and the moments that are left to him are precious. A brush with death reinforces that attitude. He has the attitude of a man reborn.

And if he had not survived, well, how bad could it be? Having coded three times and lived to tell about it, Zeiger has a sense of the stakes involved. Many of the heroes of his youth have passed on. A born storyteller, Zeiger sees death as a reunion of sorts: A martini with Dean Martin. Watching "Gunsmoke" with James Arness. Singing a tune with Frank Sinatra.

"I'm not afraid anymore," he said. "I got that out of me."

Yet let there be no doubt: Zeiger is a grateful man. "Unsung heroes" are what he calls the people who saved him.

"It changed my life," he said.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests claim the lives of nearly 350,000 people in the U.S. each year. Only about 10% of those who experience them survive, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Yet Zeiger was lucky in several respects when his heart began to malfunction at Cascade Lake. He went down in a public place and within shouting distance of a Rochester fire station. Rochester, moreover, is the place to be if you have a cardiac arrest. It boasts one of the highest survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests nationwide, said Rochester Fire Department Capt. David Beagle.

Zeiger is a retired professor who taught travel and tourism at the University of Florida and now serves as a substitute teacher for Rochester Public Schools. He has no recollection of anything that happened on the day he collapsed at Cascade Lake. What he knows about that day was related to him and reconstructed for him by those who had a role in saving him.

Heart disease runs in Zeiger's family history. Ten years ago, Zeiger suffered a heart attack and underwent a quadruple bypass. Zeiger was "hardcore" about taking care of his heart: Took his pills, ran and exercised, underwent regular stress tests at Mayo Clinic that showed no ischemia or blockages.

Yet his "widowmaker" struck without warning.

The first sign of trouble was when Zeiger began to stumble. When he collapsed, a woman strolling behind him ran up to him, turned him over, and saw Zieger was gurgling and fighting for breath. She couldn't detect a pulse. She began to administer CPR or chest compressions while telling a man who walked up to the scene to call 911.

It took firefighters from Rochester Fire Station No. 3, only half a mile away from Cascade Lake, a minute to arrive on the scene. A firefighter took over the task of doing chest compressions. For CPR to be effective, Beagle said, the compressions need to be 2 inches in depth and 100 compressions per minute. Several of Zeiger's ribs were broken in the process.

"If you don't get the right depth and get a decent rate, you're not going to get the blood out to the vital organs that are needed, so you're not going to get it to the brain," Beagle said.

First responders also attached to Zeiger an automated external defibrillator, a machine that shocks the heart to restore normal rhythm. A common misperception about defibrillators — perpetuated by hospital movies and dramas — is that the heart is jolted back to life through the use of paddles applied to the chest. But in reality, this machine uses stickers attached to the chest.

Zeiger received two shocks from the AED to get his heart back to deliver normal sinus rhythm. He was then hauled to the Saint Marys Hospital emergency room by ambulance.

"We were feeling good about it," Beagle said.

Zeiger said his heart stopped two more times, once in the ambulance en route to the emergency room, then later in the hospital when he woke up to find his daughter at his bedside.

Zeiger's once-clogged arteries are now fortified by mesh stents that facilitate blood flow. A rectangular device bulges from the left side of Zieger's chest like a pack of cigarettes. If his heartbeat runs too fast or slow or goes into an arrhythmia, it kicks it back into normal rhythm.

Zeiger has sought to meet and thank everyone who helped him, from the strangers who rushed to his aid to the first responders and doctors and nurses in the emergency room and ICU to the doctor who put in his stents.

"They're heroes," he said.

For a long time after his recovery, Zeiger became what he calls a "cardiac cripple." He didn't want to go anywhere. He was afraid of everything. He didn't want to leave his home. A buddy urged him to return to the spot where he almost died.

It saved him.

"It was like an epiphany. I just faced the fear of where I thought I had died. But I didn't realize it was where I was saved. It took all of the fear and anxiety out of my head that I had. And it was where I decided I was going to live life," he said.