Two Cherokee Firefighters Save Two Lives on the Same Day

CORRECTION: Lt. Bennett's wife's grandmother, not grandfather, passed away.

ORIGINAL STORY: Friday, August 2 will be a day that two Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services officers won't soon forget.

On that day, Lieutenants John Bennett and Mike Malone were off duty and hundreds of miles apart, but both men managed to save the lives of strangers who had stopped breathing.

Bennett was at Marietta's Medford Funeral Home, mourning the death of his wife's grandfather, when a man collapsed in the parking lot. 

Bennett was summoned to help save the man's life, and after about three rounds of CPR, the man was revived and was taken to Kennestone Hospital.

“It is an amazing feeling,” Bennett told the Cherokee Tribune. “I know that it’s rare that you get to get a save, and that you get somebody back when they go into cardiac arrest. It’s a good feeling whenever that happens, to be able to make that much of a difference, not only in the life of the person that you saved, but in their family, too.”

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, Malone was waiting to board a flight back home after performing a domestic repatriation in his second job at Assist America. Malone had just returned a patient to the area from Dallas.

As he was getting his ticket, a man behind him collapsed. A crowd gathered, and Malone was told that the man did not have a heartbeat and was not breathing.

Malone found an automated external defibrillator (AED) and attached it to the man while also performing CPR. Malone was able to revive the man, and assisted Pittsburgh first responders with the man until he was taken to the hospital.

Malone was not able to learn the man's name, as his connecting flight had changed and he had to rush to make his flight.

“In my line of work, I’ve realized that you don’t get that many people back, so it was just a ‘right place, right time’ thing,” he said to the Tribune.