Teen Undergoes 120 Minutes of CPR Following Cardiac Arrest: 'He Essentially Died and Was Brought Back to Life' (Exclusive)

Tremaine "TJ" Richmond played center for his high school’s basketball team during their last game of the season on Valentine’s Day 2025. After the team won, the 18-year-old went out to celebrate with friends in their hometown of Bosier City, La.

The next day, he told his mother he wasn't feeling well.

“I had a knot in my chest, and it was hard for me to breathe,” TJ, now 19, tells PEOPLE.

His mother took him to four different doctors over the next week.

“I couldn't give up. I knew he was sick. I could see it,” says his mother, Charissa Richmond, 37, a state health worker.

Doctors thought he might have bronchitis, so they gave him medicine for his cough. “But nothing changed,” Charissa says. In fact, he got worse.

On March 8, 2025, his mother and sister Taleiya had to go to a cheerleading competition three hours from home. Since TJ was still not feeling well, Charissa asked her mom, Delores Briggs, to stay with him. But he became more ill as the day went on. Eventually his grandmother took him to the ER at Willis Knighton Health in Bossier, where they were shocked to learn the news: TJ had end-stage congestive heart failure.

“It was really scary,” TJ says. “I got real depressed and I started crying.” He recalls being so worried he could barely breathe.

Charissa and Taleiya rushed back and went straight to the hospital. After a few hours, Charissa left to pick up a change of clothes for TJ. But not even 10 minutes later, TJ's father, Tremaine Richmond Sr., called and told her to come back immediately. TJ had coded. He went into cardiac arrest.

“His body just shut down,” his mother says. “Everything stopped.”

But hospital staff refused to let the teen's condition deteriorate. After putting him on a LUCAS chest compression machine, which performs CPR, they sent for Dr. Ahmed Virani. The pulmonary critical care physician was 20 minutes away at Willis Knighton's main campus in Shreveport. "I got a call that there was an 18-year-old who'd had a cardiac event, and his heart had stopped and they were actively doing resuscitative efforts," Virani tells PEOPLE.

He rushed to the sister hospital and oversaw the machine continuing to perform CPR, trying to resuscitate the teenager. "We were faced with the decision whether to escalate his support. Usually, medical journals and literature will tell you after a certain amount of time, it's not going to be successful."

That didn't stop Virani. He prepped TJ for an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a short-term life support system for people with life-threatening heart and lung conditions. It pumps blood outside the body through an artificial lung to allow the heart and lungs to rest and hopefully heal.

"I just didn't want to give up," Virani says. "I felt compelled to do it in the moment. Something told me we should try."

TJ was on life support for more than 90 minutes as his family members waited and prayed.

Soon enough, the teen’s heart could beat on its own.

“This young man essentially died and was brought back to life,” says his cardiologist Dr. Joseph Spinner, 40, medical director of Heart Transplantation at Texas Children’s Hospital, who met TJ after he was airlifted to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, 240 miles away.

There, genetic testing revealed he was born with a gene mutation that put him at risk for developing cardiomyopathy, a condition of a weakened heart muscle that put him at risk for life-threatening arrhythmias, explains Spinner.

On April 21, 2025, TJ had a Left Ventricular Assist (LVAD) device surgically implanted to help his heart pump blood throughout his body. This enabled him to leave the hospital without a working heart.

It made it possible for him to walk in his high school graduation in May. He crossed the stage and received his diploma with the rest of his classmates.

Unfortunately, he found himself back at Texas Children’s in July with an infection. One month later, he was placed on the heart transplant list.

For the next six months, he was hospital-bound; he passed the time playing video games, praying and visiting with family and hospital staff.

“The nurses and the doctors helped me through it,” he says, “They made me feel like I was back at home and they all treated me like I was their child. It made me feel real safe.”

He received a new heart on Jan. 24, 2026. TJ says he felt so “happy” and “very grateful” when he got the call that they had a new heart for him. “I just prayed and kept my faith in God,” he says. “I was always taught to never give up."

Charissa says she was overjoyed. “It took me back to when I birthed him,” she says. “I held him first, and he’s getting a new lease on life, and I held him again.”

“TJ is an absolute fighter,” Spinner, who performed the transplant, says. “TJ's case demonstrates that miracles still happen every day at places like Texas Children's.”

Two weeks later, TJ was able to go home.

While TJ missed his freshman year of college because he was in the hospital, he was able to defer. He plans to study physical therapy and dreams of one day working for the NBA.

He and his mother are sharing his story to show not only that survival is possible, but to emphasize the importance of organ donation. Charissa says she has always been a registered organ donor and encourages others to do the same.

"You're helping so many people as an organ donor," she says. "Because you never know. We never knew TJ was going to need a heart. Never in a million years."

Her words of hope to other families facing health struggles? “Stay positive, pray and don’t give up,” she says. “Even when you’re down at your lowest and you feel like you can’t get up. You can."