Gratitude: East Lansing man says he owes life to driver who stopped to check why his car was stopped

Judy Putnam | Lansing State Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption East Lansing couple grateful for lifesavers during husband's health emergency Kobie Johnson and his wife Diane are grateful for a good Samaritan and East Lansing Police officers who saved Kobie's life after a cardiac arrest.

EAST LANSING – Aurelio “Rikki” Todd heard the car horns honking before he got to a line of backed up traffic in East Lansing.

Todd was driving east on Burcham Drive, on a run for his medical marijuana delivery service, Caregiver of Lansing.

But he found himself snarled in a line of cars behind a dark blue GMC Terrain that was stopped in the turn lane at the Hagadorn Road intersection.

Todd watched some 15 cars go around the car through two cycles of the traffic light. As he made his way up the line, he was about to do the same but paused, thinking, “The man sat there and missed two lights. There’s got to be something wrong.”

His second thought turned out to be a lifesaver for Kobie Johnson, 45, of East Lansing. Todd got out of his car and found Johnson slumped in his locked vehicle.

Todd banged on the window. Johnson’s eyes flitted then his head slumped to his shoulder. It looked like he stopped breathing.

Todd ran to his car and called 911, telling the dispatcher to hurry as the man was unresponsive. His friend who was riding with him moved Todd’s car and started helping move the traffic out of the way.

As they waited for emergency responders, Todd kept talking to Johnson through the rolled-up window.

“I kept beating on the car yelling … ‘Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Just hold on,’” Todd said. “I wanted him to know ‘aint nobody going anywhere. We’re here. They’re coming. Don’t worry. Just hold on.”

That was Sept. 26, just before 5 p.m.

East Lansing Officer Andrew Stephenson was just over a mile away, filling out paperwork at the East Lansing police station, when Todd’s call came in. He was the first to arrive, followed shortly by Officer Matt Heffelfinger and then Sgt. Erich Vedder.

Breaking the window

Stephenson saw that Johnson still had his foot on the brake and the car was in gear. He pulled his squad car perpendicular in front of Johnson’s car to keep it from moving. The traffic was heavy as the intersection is between an elementary school and a child care center.

Stephenson was headed to his squad car to get a tool to break in when Vedder told him he had one.

Vedder keeps a gadget he bought on Amazon on his key chain. It’s designed to cut a seatbelt and break out of a car window if you are trapped inside a car after an accident. It has a spring-loaded spike. Vedder hit the lower corner of the passenger side window once, twice. On the third try it shattered.

Stephenson unlocked the car doors while Vedder and Heffelfinger pulled the unconscious Johnson onto the pavement.

Vedder remembers checking his airway. The officers could find no pulse. They considered alcohol and drugs – they could give him Narcan to combat an overdose.

But there were no empty bottles in his car and his arms were free of needle tracks.

It has to be medical, they decided. Vedder began chest compressions, continuing for at least three minutes. When paramedics arrived and took over Johnson’ care, they reported a faint pulse.

Officer prayed

After the ambulance left, Stephenson went to Johnson’s house on Lexington two blocks from the scene. Johnson’s wife, Diane Cardenas-Johnson, a teacher at Lansing’s Sexton High School, was working late, and no one was home.

Stephenson stood outside the home and said a prayer.

“I just prayed for a positive outcome for Kobie and his family, and that it wasn’t his time yet,” he said.

Kobie is the son of Joan Jackson Johnson, the city of Lansing’s director of Human Relations and Community Services.

At Sparrow Hospital, an emergency room nurse took her son’s phone and said ‘Siri, Call Mom.”

The call went through. Jackson Johnson said it was after 6 p.m and she was at her Lansing office. The nurse told her to get to the hospital immediately as it was unclear if Kobie would survive.

Jackson Johnson called Kobie’s wife, who had just gotten home from work.

Cardenas-Johnson got a friend to take her to the hospital. She said the situation looked grave. Doctors reported to her that he was in a medical coma, with his blood cooled to prevent brain damage. Her husband of three years had a cardiac arrest, caused by an electric problem with the heart.

As friends and family gathered, Cardenas-Johnson said, Stephenson visited them at the hospital and told them he had prayed for Johnson’s recovery.

“We all started crying together,” Cardenas-Johnson recalled. “What was more touching than anything was that he came by the house and prayed over our house.”

The prayers were answered. Johnson survived.

Stephenson and Vedder joined Todd in an interview last week at the couple's home.

Stephenson said it was the first time in his nine years on the job that he helped successfully resuscitate someone whose heart had stopped. Vedder said in his 22 years, he’s had just three survivors out of 15 to 20 attempts.

Johnson, who is on medical leave from his job, said he had been treated for diverticulitis, an intestinal condition, and the infection triggered the cardiac arrest. He was in the hospital for a week and another week of rehabilitation at Mary Free Bed of Sparrow.

He remembers little from the month of September.

He’s a 1992 graduate of Lansing Catholic Central High School, now called Lansing Catholic High School. He stayed in the area to earn a degree from Michigan State University in 1997 in marketing supply chain management.

After more than 20 years in Chicago working for a logistics firm, Johnson and his wife decided to move back to the area to be closer to family in 2017.

Volunteer job

Johnson was working on opening a local office for a Bay City firm, Saginaw Valley Marine Terminal and Warehouse.

He’s on the board of the East Lansing Junior Trojan football program and he volunteered to score a game the day he was stricken. Even now, he wonders why he was headed east when he should have been headed west to go to the high school a few blocks from his home.

While he was hospitalized, doctors implanted a defibrillator to keep his heart regulated. His heart is fine. He’s getting therapy for fine motor skills and some memory loss.

He hopes to return to work in January.

Johnson feels grateful to the group, including the paramedics and hospital workers, that worked to keep him alive.

“I will never be able to thank everyone involved. It’s hard because I have no memory of it,” he said.

He said he’s motivated to “live every day to the fullest, because you never know if you’re promised another one.”

“I’m sure I woke up that Thursday thinking it’s another random day, not knowing it could be my last,” he said.

Johnson said he doesn’t blame the drivers who went around his car without checking on him. He likely would have done the same. Now, he said, he’ll be careful to question such situations, like Todd did.

The officers praised Todd’s action.

“To take a half second out of his day to evaluate the situation rather than to just drive around him…he took the correct course of action in my opinion in every aspect of what he did,” Stephenson said.

Johnson said, if not for Todd’s hesitation to pass his car, he wouldn’t be here.

“Who knows how many more light cycles I would have sat through? I don’t think there would have been a chance that I survived,” he said.

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Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.

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