Christina Schulz was returning from a bad job interview in Irvine and feeling a bit down when she stumbled across the limp body of a man and saved his life with cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Last week, the Irvine Police Department awarded a citizen’s medal to Schulz – a 32-year-old resident of Tustin’s Village of Hope transitional housing program for the homeless – for her actions on Jan. 16, when a fateful encounter and a 911 dispatcher’s careful direction kept a man alive.

Just before 1 p.m. that day, Schulz was leaving her interview, walking west of the Irvine Spectrum, when she came across a young man lying face down at a bus stop.

“Poor guy, he’s probably passed out drunk,” she thought as she walked past his body. A few strides later, she turned around, remembering a promise she made to herself six months before, when she had helped move a homeless man she found lying near the road.

“I promised myself that day that I would never walk by another person like that without checking,” said Schulz, who once was homeless for a year and was addicted to meth for half her life before getting sober three years ago.

She has been living at the Village of Hope with her 12-year-old daughter since March 2012.

As she bent over the man at the bus stop, she noticed his arm was twisted strangely. When she turned his body over, the man’s eyes were open and his face was dark blue. She called 911.

“Is he breathing?” the 911 dispatcher asked. No. “Even a little bit?” No. “Have you performed CPR?” Never.

Following the dispatcher’s instructions, Schulz placed her hands on the man’s chest, began pumping, and watched as color slowly returned to his face. She could feel the man’s ribs crack beneath her thrusts.

“He was dead,” Schulz said, pausing to wipe away tears. “Nobody on the street would stop to help. Not even to tell me (my location to direct paramedics).”

Finally, a man ran across the street to help. Together, they located an address and pumped the man’s heart until police arrived. Afterward, they hugged, cried and prayed together. She still does not know his name.

It took paramedics just over four minutes to arrive at the scene, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi.

If the process had taken even two minutes longer, the man would likely have died or suffered irreversible brain damage, he said.

Irvine police said the man is expected to recover from the incident.

Other details about the man or how he came to be lying at the bus stop were unavailable.

“It is a combination for the good Samaritan, her willingness to act, the dispatcher giving CPR instructions to someone who had never done CPR, the dispatcher directing crews and the crews getting there so fast,” Concialdi said. “Together, they saved this man.”

On Thursday night, Schulz returned to the spot where she encountered the unconscious man, this time to meet Nancy Horn, the 911 dispatcher who answered her call. The two shared a hug.

“It is nice to find out what happened to the patient, and to be able to put a face to the caller’s voice,” said Horn, a Trabuco Canyon resident.

“That’s not something that we get all the time doing what we do. A lot of the time, we don’t find out what the outcome is. … There is a big picture behind the 911 call. The ambulance people and the mapping people and the police. It’s just nice when it works out the way that it did,” Horn said.

Horn has answered thousands of calls in her 24 years as a dispatcher, but said she tries to treat each caller with the same care she would if her family members were experiencing an emergency.

Schulz said she knows nothing about the man she saved, but would like to meet him.

Her main concern remains finding a job, though. A year after earning an administrative assistant certificate from Irvine Valley College, Schulz said it has been difficult to find work because of shoplifting and fraud convictions on her record. But she hopes she can find employment, save some money, provide for her daughter and finally move out of the Village of Hope.

Since Schulz’s story became public, several people have stopped by the Village of Hope, saying they wanted copies of her resumé to give to potential employers.

Concialdi said that in the past two days, the Orange County Fire Authority has received many calls from locals looking to help Schulz. He has referred callers to the Village of Hope. The Orange County Fire Authority Firefighters Benevolent Association, a nonprofit created to help the families of local firefighters, also plans to make a donation to Schulz, Concialdi said.

As Schulz walked around the village recently, residents and staff alike addressed her as “hero.” She smiled bashfully.

“I’m happy he is alive,” Schulz said. “I feel like he would have died if I hadn’t been there. But I think it was what any decent human should do. We need to care about each other.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7960 or jgraham@ocregister.com