Minnetonka coach saved with CPR and AED after suffering sudden cardiac arrest

For a 45-year-old, Jon Toftoy is in great shape.

"I've raced road bikes professionally for a number of years," he said. "If you ski the Birkie – I'm in the elite wave, so I race against the fast guys."

He exercises so much, it's almost comical.

"Any room I'm in, I'm always like, 'Well, I'm the healthiest guy here," Toftoy laughed.

That helps make Toftoy a perfect coach for the Minnetonka High School Mountain Bike Team.

And, combined with no family history of heart problems, that makes Toftoy about the last person you'd expect to suffer sudden cardiac arrest.

On August 8, he was riding through the woods with the team at Theo Wirth Park in Minneapolis when something felt off.

"I don't know how else to describe it other than when I've been pulled over by the police before, like you get that pit in your stomach like, 'Oh, I got caught,'" Toftoy said.

He made it back to a main path just in time for fellow coach Tony Caruso to find him.

"And I asked if he was good, and he said, 'No, my heart,'" Caruso said.

As Caruso called 911, ICU Nurse Grant Martin happened to run by.

"Just randomly. I don't know Grant. Never met Grant," Toftoy said.

"I would say it was a matter of 10 seconds; I knew Jon was in cardiac arrest," Martin said. "With zero resources and what we had, the one thing that saved him was CPR."

Martin aggressively began CPR. And within six minutes, Golden Valley Police were there -- with Golden Valley Fire and North Memorial EMS -- able to bring Toftoy back with a defibrillator, as fellow cycling coach Brian Kessen, an ER doc, was able to help.

"It all happened that fast. Like, everybody came, like I told you, right moment, right time," Caruso told Toftoy as the group reunited at the park 11 days after the incident.

Reuniting with his rescuers is special for Toftoy. For them to see him walking and talking means a lot.

"I mean, it's just overwhelming gratitude is the only thing I can describe, for you guys having my back and doing your job but doing it well," Toftoy told them at the reunion.

Toftoy calls his survival story a miracle, not series of coincidences.

"I just feel like God has a plan for my life and this wasn't the time for it," he said. "I just feel like, yeah, life's not over. I just, for some reason, have to go through this process right now."

The married father of four still gets to bike with his kids. And after he recovers from an additional open-heart surgery next week, Toftoy expects to return to coaching.

However, he plans to moderate his intense training, which doctors believe is the actual root of his arterial blockage.

Toftoy's been told that it's not uncommon for people who train so intensely in a sport like cycling, at his age, to develop calcification in their arteries despite being seemingly so healthy. That's what surgeons are going to address in next week's surgery.

"We think exercise is healthy. And by training so intensely, I believe I'm going to be super healthy. Well, maybe there's a sweet spot where you've got to exercise, but you're not supposed to race intense efforts every year for decades. That's the best explanation they've given me," Toftoy said.