After “miracle” revival, Salt Lake man meets group who saved his life

SALT LAKE CITY — An emergency doctor and two ER nurses ended up in the right place at the right time, bringing a Salt Lake man back to life after he went into cardiac arrest.

It all happened during the St. George Marathon back in October, but on Tuesday afternoon Dan Sorensen, 60, got to meet his saviors for the very first time.

“They were right behind me when I went into cardiac arrest,” Dan Sorenson said with emotion as he stood next to the three medical professionals. “They just each jumped in.”

It was about 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 5, and Sorensen was cheering on family and friends in the Marathon at about mile 23.

He was running alongside them when he suddenly collapsed. His son was right next to him.

“I go ‘what’s going on’ and he starts to lose his balance and says, ‘I don’t know’ and he goes completely limp and hits the ground face first,” Oliver Sorenson, Dan’s son, said. “I’m just in shock. His eyes are completely unresponsive and he’s not breathing, just blood all over.”

Within seconds Dr. Mike Henstrom with Intermountain Health who was running in the marathon stops to help.

“Mile 23 my brain is dead, but when I got there I could definitely tell this man needs help,” Henstrom said.

Julie Street, an ER nurse with Intermountain Health who manages the Saratoga Springs Emergency Department stops running and comes over to help. So does Katie Smith, another ER nurse at St. Marks Hospital.

“I just went right by his head to try and open up his airway,” said Street. “He had fallen, he had blood on his face, poor color, he did not look good. I didn’t think he would survive.”

The three strangers worked together as a team as if they were in the emergency room.

“It felt like we were all co-workers already. We just worked together, it was very seamless,” said Smith.

They worked on Sorensen, performing CPR until medical teams arrived.

Miraculously, Dan Sorensen did survive.

“Dan was not meant to die that day. Sweaty angels were all around him,” Smith said with a smile.

Sorensen and his family could not be more grateful.

“Just by some miracle, (they) happened to be right there when I collapsed,” Dan Sorenson said. “Runners who happen to be emergency medical professionals right there at the critical moment. They weren’t even together, they were all just separately running the race.”

“We’ve talked about the timing and what lead us to that moment and really I think it was meant to be. It was meant to be to help him,” Street said.

“That timing had to be somewhat divinely orchestrated to have all three of them there,” Jana Sorenson, Dan Sorenson’s wife, said.

Dan Sorensen says he doesn’t remember that day, just waking up a couple of days later in the hospital.

He ended up requiring a quadruple bypass surgery to repair his heart. Today, his family says he is as healthy and as strong as ever.

“Just a miracle it happened when it did happen,” Oliver Sorenson said.