Michael Aronson and his wife, Vivian, were spending the evening out to dinner with a friend of theirs, Karen Vogel. The three of them decided to dine at Shallots in Skokie, Chicago, Illinois. Little did they know, their calm dinner plans were about to turn into something much darker.
In the video below, posted on March 7, 2017, Michael explains, "The food was just about to be delivered, and I was about to say something, and everything went black."
The 71-year-old slipped away and it soon became clear to Karen, who happened to be a medical doctor, that Michael was having a heart attack in the middle of the restaurant. Karen jumped over to Michael and began performing CPR as 911 was called.
A group of customers forgot about their dinners and volunteered to help in any way they could.
During that time, someone successfully "forced their way into the gym, literally, to get the defibrillator that was on the wall," Vivian recalls.
One of the nine police officers grabbed the defibrillator from the customer who had retrieved it from Anytime Fitness next door and shocked Michael twice. Michael was considered to be dead, until the defibrillator shocks helped him regain his heartbeat and pulse.
After the horrifying ordeal, Michael woke up in the hospital, unaware of how he got there, nor the fact that he had just survived a heart attack.
Vivian says, "I saw before my very eyes and on a personal note, how this can save a life. And as it says in scriptures, 'If you save one life, it's as if you saved the world.'"
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