It was a normal Sunday afternoon for Ron Maurer. He and a friend were returning to Lancaster from their hunting cabin in Huntingdon. They stopped to gas up in Newport and use the restroom.
But that’s where Maurer’s memory ends from Sept. 20. He doesn’t remember much from that weekend, and he barely remembers walking into the Giant grocery store.
That’s because he nearly died — multiple times — that weekend.
“I got about seven or eight feet from the bathroom and collapsed,” the 66-year-old Maurer said in a recent phone interview.
That fateful day, Maurer had a massive heart attack in the middle of the store. Luckily for him, it happened mid-afternoon in the middle of the store. Multiple Giant employees and several nearby shoppers saw him collapse, hitting his head off a display case. They reacted quickly, calling 911, securing the area from on onlookers and conducting CPR until an ambulance crew arrived.
The actions saved Maurer’s life.
“He hit so hard he busted his head open,” said Anita Adams, the store manager. “Some of my associates ran over and saw he was not okay.”
Several shoppers with experience in the medical fields also witnessed the incident and moved in quickly to help.
“There was no pulse and definitely no breathing,” Adams said of Maurer.
Giant employees Alyson Crup, Wendy Brofee, Zachary Kauffman, Joanna Rine and Mark Kerstatter worked quickly to call 911 and fetch the automated external defibrillator or AED, a device that walks people through CPR, scans a victim’s heart, and then shocks that person to restart a heart. Giant made sure the Newport store had an AED several years ago, Adams said.
“Thank God for that because it helped everyone through the process,” she said. “I was very proud of my team and told the three ladies (who helped) they were angels.”
The Maurers said that’s an accurate description for Lori Paul, Shannon Hudson and Bethany Ramsey, the three women who stepped in to administer CPR on Ron Maurer. Paul is a former emergency medical technician, Hudson is a licensed professional nurse and Ramsey is an exercise physiologist at UPMC Pinnacle’s Heart & Vascular Institute. Maurer had possibly the three best people standing nearby when his heart stopped.
“They normally wouldn’t be shopping there that day,” Maurer said the women told him at a reunion between everyone involved that day.
Most of the employees from that day and the three health professionals who worked on Maurer met at Giant in October to celebrate Ron’s new lease on life, a blessing that his wife and doctors said is an absolute miracle.
“There were so many variables that if they didn’t line up, he wouldn’t be here,” Cindy Maurer said.
Ron said his cardiologist couldn’t believe he was alive after everything he had been through. In the store that day, the AED had to shock Ron three times to restart his heart. That’s a lot, in addition to the CPR that the women performed on him for nearly 20 minutes.
When Ron got to the hospital in Harrisburg, doctors there said he had blockages of up to 99 percent in three of his arteries feeding his heart, the Maurers said. Doctors couldn’t perform surgery right then because Ron wouldn’t have survived the procedures. Instead, they had to do less invasive surgery to place three stents in his arteries to open them and get blood flowing to his heart again.
The doctors continued to work on Ron, Cindy Maurer said. He had a lot going against him: he had a massive heart attack and technically died twice on the operating table, he was diabetic, he hit his head in the fall, he was on a ventilator in the middle of the Covid-19 epidemic, and he had to be put on dialysis following in the recovery room.
“They told me patients like him, there’s only a 10 percent chance of survival,” Cindy said. “Ron was just laying there stock still. I called the kids and said get here. We were prepared to say goodbye.”
The silent vigil and prayers began, but by Tuesday of that week, Ron began responding to simple commands of the nurses attending to him at the hospital, Cindy said. Things like wiggling fingers or toes and squeezing a hand. They were little things at first, indications that he could hear and understood what was happening around him.
By Wednesday, he was awake and trying to pull tubes out of his nose, a response that was much more like him, Cindy and Ron said, laughing today about a very painful memory. By October, Ron was much more conscious and improving daily. He said he was on so many pain medications that some of that time is very blurry.
“I started making phone calls that first week and told everyone I died on Sunday,” Ron said. “But I don’t remember that.”
Following that, Ron had to begin cardio therapy to improve his heart health, as well as wear an automatic defibrillator vest that monitors his heart rhythms and administers a shock if he shows sign of another heart attack. It’s still possible that he could need more surgery and an implanted defibrillator in the future.
He isn’t out of the woods yet, but he has a new opportunity to spend more years with his wife, children and grandchildren thanks to the people who helped him in Giant. That’s something so important to the people who saved him, who are now Maurers’ new extended family.
“They were all excited to get together,” Ron said about the reunion. “The manager couldn’t stop hugging me.”
That was true, Adams said. She gave Ron a big hug when she saw him again. And meeting his family gave them all such a warm feeling that their actions were more than just a mechanical response.
“I’m so thankful Ron is alive,” Adams said. “He’s my buddy, now. To see him up and around helped erase the image of him on the ground, lifeless.”
The newspaper wasn’t immediately able to reach the others who saved Maurer’s life.
Ron Maurer, who’s a building inspector, said he expects to return to work sometime in January and is looking forward to retirement in the next several years.
He’s glad all of the little things lined up that fateful day, because his doctors said if one item was out of place, he would have died. For example, if he had made it to the bathroom, no one would’ve seen him collapse.
Most believe someone was watching over Ron that day. “This was God,” Cindy Maurer said.
“If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here,” Ron said.
Jim T. Ryan can be reached via email at jtryan@perrycountytimes.com
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