In a sense, Alex Nehls had a very bad stroke of luck late last month.

In another sense, he’s incredibly lucky that everything played out just the way it did.

Nehls, 37, is a runner. His mother got him into it when he was in fourth grade.

On April 25, despite the rain, Nehls went out for a run in Eagle River, a neighborhood on the north side of Fort Wayne. Greg Thomas recalls seeing him, thinking that the stranger was really getting soaked in the rain.

And then, for a reason no one has been able to figure out, Nehls’ heart stopped. He landed on the ground, apparently dead.

On any other day, there would have been a good chance that no one would have noticed. People would have all been inside because of the rain, Thomas said. But on this particular day there was an open house. People were coming in and out despite the rain, and someone saw Nehls collapse.

Thomas, a mortgage banker at the open house, found out about it when someone walked in and told him. So Thomas, who took CPR training about 20 years ago, rushed into the rain to find Nehls, who had no ID on him, lying on the ground with his mouth and eyes open, and started CPR while someone else called 911.

As he performed CPR, Thomas said, Nehls would periodically suddenly take a deep breath, as though he had regained consciousness, but then he would lose him again.

Not far away was a sheriff’s deputy, Eric Foster. A deputy can patrol anywhere he chooses to. He could have been miles to the south. But he’d stopped at a Lassus station to buy gas.

When he saw a report of a jogger down, he realized he was just down the road, so he responded.

Call it luck, but, Foster says, "I firmly believe in a higher power. There’s a reason I went there," to that particular gas station, which left him so nearby.

Foster, though, was also carrying something called an AED, a portable defibrillator. Foster had used the machine before, but he’d never had to shock anyone.

Three times, though, Foster had to shock Nehls. Finally an ambulance crew arrived, managed to get a pulse, and took Nehls, who had no ID, to the hospital, where he spent 13 days in intensive care.

As Nehls recovered, Foster did go to visit him in the hospital. Nehls was a young guy, just like him, in his 30s. "I took this personally," Foster said.

But it was a happy ending, something that Foster says doesn’t happen to cops often.

Nehls, a physician assistant at Orthopedics Northeast, is home now, Alison Nehls says. He’s recovering, ready to take up running again. His wife wants him to take it easy.

Despite plenty of tests, there’s no explanation for why his heart stopped that day.

And there’s no explanation why everyone who was needed happened to be on hand.

All Alison Nehls can say is that Foster is their hero – and AEDs should be available to all officers.

Frank Gray reflects on his and others’ experiences in columns published Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. He can be reached by phone at 461-8376, fax at 461-8893, or email at fgray@jg.net. You can also follow him on Twitter @FrankGrayJG.