Jason Kingsbury has been playing soccer all of his life — from the time he was a kid, to high school, to present day.

On the evening of Sept. 7, 2015, the 45-year-old Redmond Ridge resident and others were playing at Arena Sports, an indoor soccer facility in Redmond. It was not unlike other evenings when he played soccer, but this time, after playing for a while, Kingsbury began to feel funny. He sat down on a bench on the side of the field before falling unconscious onto the ground.

Kingsbury had gone into sudden cardiac arrest.

SPRINGING INTO ACTION

The people around him quickly took action, yelling for help, checking for a pulse as Kingsbury was turning blue and beginning CPR when they could not find one.

“He looked terrible,” said Kingsbury’s wife Teresa Kingsbury, who plays on the same soccer team as Jason and was there that evening.

Teresa, who is CPR trained but had never had to use it, began chest compressions and their teammate Brian Funk performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Another teammate, Peter Jensen, called out for an automated external defibrillator (AED) and referee Jeff Bochner went to retrieve it. While this was happening, Cameron Fraser at the Arena Sports front desk called 911.

As they waited for first responders to arrive, Bochner brought the AED to Funk, who had never used one before but looked at the directions on the machine to figure out what to do.

“I was pretty scared,” he said. “I was scared of him dying.”

While he may have been scared at the time, Funk is now able to joke a little bit while recounting that day’s events.

“He flailed,” Funk said with a small smile about Jason when he shocked him with the AED.

Jason, who survived the event, returned the humor.

“It was all a shock to me,” he said about having the AED used on him. “No pun intended.”

RECOGNIZING A TEAM EFFORT

Jason, Teresa, Funk and others shared their stories from that day Monday evening at Arena Sports, and Teresa and Funk were recognized and presented with CPR Gold Lifesaving medals from the Redmond Fire Department (RFD) for helping save Jason’s life. Others who assisted were also recognized. While Teresa and Funk were the only ones to receive medals, everyone — including Jason — received T-shirts from the Medic One Foundation, which funds paramedic training for all Medic One providers in King County, as well as many communities throughout the region. They also received a CPR kit and an RFD shirt.

Redmond Fire Chief Tommy Smith presented them with the medals, thanking them for being a part of a successful call, noting that as firefighters, that is not always the case.

“This is a team effort,” he said about responses to emergencies such as this. “It means so much to us.”

Firefighter Paul Atkinson, who also spoke during Monday’s event, added that there are a series of four actions that help reduce mortality in cases of cardiac arrest, creating a chain of survival. Those four links are: early access to 911, early access to CPR, early defibrillation and early advanced life support. Thanks to everyone involved that day, Atkinson said Jason received all of that. Atkinson also acknowledged Arena Sports and praised them for not only having an AED onsite, but also having staff who know how to access the device.

Mike Hilley, medical services administrator for RFD, said people like Teresa, Funk and the others are what closes the gap between a cardiac arrest and when paramedics arrive. He said situations such as Jason’s are evidence of how well it works when people are willing to help and participate, stressing the importance of having more AEDs in businesses and more people learn CPR.

OVERWHELMING GRATITUDE

In addition to sharing his story from that day — most of which he can still recall as he did not experience any memory loss like some cardiac arrest patients do — Jason thanked everyone involved in saving his life, having a difficult time describing all of his feelings of gratitude.

“Intellectually, you understand,” he said about people stepping up and taking action to help. “It means a lot.”

Teresa said when it came to doing something, people did not hesitate and no one needed to be told what to do.

“They just did it,” she said.

Jason said he has no history of cardiac arrest in his family, although there have been a few relatives who have had heart attacks, which is what he and Teresa thought was what had happened to him.

Teresa said it took a few weeks for it to sink in that what her husband experienced was a life-threatening medical event. Neither of them was aware of sudden cardiac arrest prior to this, but have since learned it is different from a heart attack.

Teresa said if a heart attack involves the heart’s “plumbing,” sudden cardiac arrest involves the “electrical system.”

It has been about four months since Jason’s cardiac arrest and he is almost back to normal and even returned to playing soccer about six or seven weeks after his episode. He now has a defibrillator in his chest that monitors his heart activity and can shock him if he experiences another cardiac arrest. Jason was also taking heart medication until December but no longer needs it.

“What happened to me is, you know, more or less reparable if you survive,” he said, stressing the latter, again expressing his gratitude to those who helped save his life.