From: "Mark" 

LOL, I saw that story on one TV channel or another. Yes it's Karma, but
usually Karma is a bit more removed! 

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:43e9677f{at}w3.nls.net...
>
>
> http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060205/1054419.asp
>
> Youth saves life of woman who saved him years earlier
>
> Stunning event had odd sense of balance
>
>
> Kevin Stephan always wanted to find the right way to thank the off-duty
> nurse who got his 11-year-old heart beating again after a baseball bat
> struck him in the chest in 1999.
> Nine days ago, the now-17-year-old Kevin found the perfect way to thank
> Penny Brown.
>
> He returned the life-saving favor, rushing out of a Depew restaurant
> kitchen to administer the Heimlich maneuver as Brown choked on her lunch.
>
> In a sense, Brown saved Kevin's life - so he could help save hers.
>
> Initially, he didn't even know the woman he helped on the afternoon of
> Jan. 27 was the nurse who saved his life on a baseball diamond 61/2 years
> earlier.
>
> Kevin's mother - who happened to be in the restaurant that afternoon - was
> the first to realize the link between the two events.
>
> "Oh, my goodness," Lorraine Stephan told Brown. "You
saved my son's life
> seven years ago, and now he's saved yours."
>
> It's a pair of incidents that, by comparison, would make a pair of
> lightning strikes in the same spot seem highly probable. And a pair of
> events that would be described as too hokey, if you saw it on a TV show.
>
> "Wow. I couldn't believe it," said Kevin, now a senior at
Lancaster High
> School. "Everyone I have told is like, "No way.' They're in total
> disbelief."
>
> While neither Kevin nor Brown sought publicity for their actions, they
> both wanted to emphasize the need for people to be prepared - to learn
> CPR, the Heimlich maneuver and other life-saving techniques.
>
> "This is the essence of what we're about and what we do,"
said Nancy M.
> Blaschak, executive director of the local chapter of the American Red
> Cross. "We teach people to save people's lives, and that's happened."
>
> Blaschak said the Red Cross would love to see one person in each household
> learn such life-saving measures.
>
> "This helps get our message out, in an extraordinary way," she said.
>
> Like virtually everyone else involved in this story, Kevin, an outgoing
> teen with a big smile, is at a loss to make any logical sense out of the
> two events.
>
> But he thinks it's more than a coincidence: "It's one of those things you
> can't explain. It was meant to happen. I'm Catholic, and I believe the
> Lord kind of set things up. They say things happen for a reason, and
> nothing is a coincidence."
>
> His mother added, "I believe both of these lives were touched by the hand
> of God."
>
> Brown, an intensive-care nurse at Buffalo General Hospital, said she can't
> think too long about the two incidents "without being freaked" by it.
>
> "It's almost impossible to believe, but I'm very appreciative of what
> occurred," she added. "One good turn deserves another."
>
> The first life-saving incident occurred in July 1999, at a field across
> from Erie Community College's North campus. Kevin was acting as a batboy
> for his brother Rob's baseball team. It was between innings, and Kevin
> remembers walking into a practice cage near the dugout to pick up some
> bats. A batter whose back was turned toward Kevin struck him in the chest
> with his backswing.
>
> "All I remember is getting hit, turning around and walking like two steps
> back toward the dugout," he said. "And then I remember waking up on my
> back, with a doctor kneeling over me."
>
> Kevin fell face-first onto the ground. A coach rolled him over, he's been
> told.
>
> And Brown, the registered nurse, came rushing from the stands to help.
>
> Brown saw that Kevin was starting to have a seizure and was in cardiac
> arrest. She smacked him once on the chest, hard.
>
> "It didn't really work, so I started CPR," she said.
>
> He quickly began breathing. After several hours in the hospital, he was
> cleared and sent home.
>
> Lorraine Stephan remembers the enormity of the situation finally hitting
> home for her and her husband, Gregory.
>
> "Later that night, after we came home and the children were in bed, we
> both broke down, realizing that we almost lost our child," she said.
>
> Fast-forward to nine days ago.
>
> Kevin, who was working only because it was Regents week and he had no
> school, began his dish-washing shift at about 7 a.m.
>
> Around 2 p.m., Lorraine Stephan recognized the Brown family. Minutes
> later, she looked up to see Penny Brown in distress, her hands to her
> throat as she struggled to get air while choking.
>
> Lorraine Stephan jumped to her feet and shouted for the fry cooks to get
> her son out in the dining room immediately. The manager, knowing that
> Kevin is a Bowmansville volunteer firefighter, also summoned him.
>
> Kevin ran out, saw a waitress trying to do the Heimlich and realized the
> woman was choking.
>
> "I got behind her and started to do the Heimlich, and after two thrusts,
> the food came out into her hand," he said.
>
> So, it turns out, in yet another curiosity, both rescue efforts succeeded
> on their second tries.
>
> As he realized what he had done, Kevin heard the punchline from his
> mother.
>
> "That was Mrs. Brown," she told him. "That was the lady
who saved you."
>
> Then Kevin walked back into the kitchen to resume washing dishes.
>
> His quick action showed Kevin that you never know when you're going to use
> a life-saving technique: "I didn't wake up that morning and say, "I'm
> going to do the Heimlich today.' "
>
> Anyone who knows Kevin, a member of Boy Scout Troop 601 and the
> Bowmansville Fire Department Explorer Post 56, isn't surprised by his
> actions.
>
> "He's very mature for his age, a quick thinker and quick to act," said
> fellow firefighter Dan Curtis.
>
> One of Kevin's Scout leaders, Gerald E. Robert of Boy Scout Troop 601,
> called it the most amazing story he has heard in 30 years of scouting.
>
> "The Lord works in mysterious ways," Robert said, "and
this proves it."
>
> Not long after the Jan. 27 incident at the restaurant, Kevin called Dan
> Curtis to thank him for teaching him the right way to perform such
> life-saving techniques a few years ago.
>
> "Life is extremely valuable, and you don't always get a second
chance,"
> Curtis said of Kevin's actions. "What a way to be able to say thank you to
> someone."
>
>

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