ST. GEORGE, Utah — For Dan Sorensen, October 5 is a day he will never forget. It was a day when his heart stopped and his life hung in the balance.
Thanks to the quick actions of a group of good Samaritans, Sorensen is alive today to share his remarkable story.
That day, Sorensen was with his family at the St. George Marathon with his wife and son, cheering on friends and family.
Sorenson was an accomplished runner himself and had run that particular marathon many times, so he enjoyed finding participants near the finish line to encourage.
“I’ll usually pick one that’s trying to qualify and just pace them in,” he said.
But everything changed when his son, Oliver, noticed something was wrong.
Dan was coming back up the course against the flow of runners when he saw his son running with some of his friends. That’s when Dan joined in, and mere seconds later, collapsed.
“He just went completely limp and hit the ground, and I was like, 'Wow,'” Oliver recalled.
He took a hard fall and with a weak pulse, his heart would soon stop, and the situation was dire.
That day, however, the story turned from tragedy to hope as four individuals, none of whom he knew, rushed to his aid.
“Had they not been so quick there on the scene, these guys would have been planning my funeral rather than praying for my recovery,” Sorensen said, holding back tears.
As fate would have it, several medical professionals were nearby also running the marathon.
Julie Street, a Nurse Manager at Intermountain Saratoga Springs ER, Katie Smith, an ER nurse at MountainStar Healthcare’s St. Mark’s Hospital, Dr. Mike Henstrom, an ER Doctor at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, along with his wife Stephanie, happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Smith described the moment as chaotic but divinely aligned.
“I trust God trusts you to be here and to help this man,” she said.
Together, the group sprang into action. CPR was performed for 19 minutes until paramedics arrived to rush Sorensen to St. George Regional Hospital.
“It’s pretty clear he wasn’t breathing well, poor color. He had injured his face, so there was blood all over,” Henstrom and Street explained. “We saw he wasn’t really breathing much and monitored his pulse. As soon as it stopped, we started compressions.”
Street, who had never worked with the others before, summed it up simply: “Dan wasn’t going to die that day.”
While they were all strangers, they worked together like they had trained to do and the team’s efforts paid off.
Sorensen’s pulse returned, and he was stabilized before being rushed to St. George Regional Hospital. After a few days, he was transported to Intermountain Medical Center to undergo a quadruple bypass surgery.
After two hospitals and countless challenging days, his recovery is going well.
And now, Tuesday is another day he won’t forget: the day he saw his heroes again, reuniting with those to whom he literally owes his life.
Reflecting on the experience, Sorensen expressed gratitude for the people who saved him.
“Coming from the man on the side of the road to know that those good Samaritans were just willing to pass on their goals that day to go directly to someone in need, to me, it’s a real reflection of the divine spark in our fellow beings,” he said.
Now, Sorensen has a message for anyone who might feel early warning signs of heart trouble: don’t ignore them.
In the months leading up to his cardiac arrest, he had experienced chest tightness during morning runs but brushed it off.
“If you do go into cardiac arrest, try to do it surrounded by medical professionals,” he joked, adding a note of seriousness: “Take those warning signs seriously and get checked out before it’s too late.”
