Demetrios Fefes is lucky to be alive. He knows it.

On a blustery October morning, Fefes, his wife, Kristen, and his two young sons, wanted everyone involved in keeping him that way, to know how truly thankful he is.

A Porsche enthusiast who loves to go fast, Fefes and a friend were putting his car through its paces at the Colorado State Patrol Track in Golden, Aug. 26. 

While taking a break and sipping some water between laps, Fefes started feeling faint. He says he immediately fell face-forward into the arms of his friend. But it wasn’t a mere fainting spell — Fefes’ heart had stopped beating.

That’s not the lucky part.

But as these things go, Fefes was perhaps the luckiest man (not quite) alive. Because at the same time he collapsed, two men who would help save his life were pulled over to take a break at the exact same spot.

Dr. Brian Beezley, a retired family physician, and Paul Mueller, an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) Specialist at Porter Hospital are (luckily for Fefes) Porsche enthusiasts too. The duo didn’t know Fefes, but they did know exactly what to do at that moment — CPR — although both agree it was a daunting task.

Beezley said he had to do CPR on a patient only one time, 30 years ago. Mueller, who spends his days running a life-saving piece of machinery in an Intensive Care Unit, said he’s been certified in CPR for more than two decades, but in all of those years this was the first time he’s had to spring into action to try to save a life outside of a hospital setting.

For several minutes, the two administered life-saving chest compressions, keeping blood flowing through Fefes’ vital organs, helping to prevent brain damage and buying precious time until emergency responders arrived.

EMT, Joey Cinalli, and Paramedics, Timothy Holloway and Hunter Held, are the Stadium Medical ambulance crew that responded, along with Pleasant View firefighters, to the Fefes call.

Held, who drives the ambulance, said the call had initially been dispatched as a “fainting party” emergency. 

It wasn’t until the ambulance crew had almost reached the spot where Fefes was being tended to by Beezley and Mueller, that they heard CPR was in progress and realized they’d be treating a cardiac arrest.

Taking over for Beezley and Mueller, and using a defibrillator to get Fefes’ heart beating again, the first responders put their years of training and experience to work as they rushed Fefes to St. Anthony Hospital.

Holloway, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, said he’s really never seen anything like the series of events leading to Fefes’ survival.

“I know medics who’ve been on the job for 30 years that haven’t had someone they’ve worked on leave the hospital with full neurological status intact — able to live their lives as though the event never happened,”

he said. “So, it’s a pretty profound reality that Demetrios is here.”

Cinalli, an army medic for seven years prior to becoming a paramedic, also served in Afghanistan. He said pursuit of an outcome like Fefes had is the reason EMTs and paramedics train as hard as they do.

“The entire reason we do this job is to serve our community and make sure we do it right,” he said. “The amount of work and effort and training that we’ve (Stadium Medical staff and Pleasant View Firefighters) put into this community — Demetrios is a prime example of when it all comes together perfectly.”

Fefes’ wife, Kristen, wiped tears away as she described the shock of walking into the hospital that day. 

She’d gotten a call that Fefes had been taken to the hospital, but wasn’t given any details. She knew he’d been suffering from a double ear infection, and assumed his trip to the hospital had something to do with that. 

When she arrived at St. Anthony and asked about her husband, she was told no one with his name had been admitted. A moment later an emergency room nurse told her there was an unidentified patient in the ER that was unable to communicate. She said at that moment, the gravity of the situation came crashing down on her. 

Three days later, surgeons performed heart surgery on Fefes — a quadruple bypass that took more than eight hours. Four days later, he was home again, reassessing his diet and exercise routines.

Fefes says making those changes has been easy so far. He knows it’s still early in the process and hopes that as time goes by, he can keep bad habits at bay. But he says there’s more to it than diet and exercise alone.

“Everyone talks about genetics and diet, but no one talks about stress,” he said. “And that’s probably the bigger killer. That’s what I’m learning from this, is the stress or anger or whatever, can make a big difference.”

If he’s taken any message from this ordeal, Fefes says it’s that it can happen to anyone, at any time. He’s got several more weeks of a 12-week rehab program to go through. But he’s already thinking about ways to pay his good fortune forward.

Fefes wants to fund, and even lead, CPR classes in the future, in hopes of seeing more outcomes like the one he had. 

In case you’re wondering, meetings between first responders and people they save are quite rare. This meeting was made possible when Fefes’ insurance card was accidentally left in the ambulance that transported him to the hospital. It was found and mailed to his home, along with a note offering him the chance to meet the crew that helped save his life.

There’s that luck again. 

To put it into perspective, if just one of the actions contributing to his survival hadn’t occurred that day, his luck would quite possibly, have run out and a happy day of giving thanks to all of the people who saved him, would never have happened.