Two weeks ago, a meeting took place on a bus in Dimona that was quite out of the ordinary. The thing that made it extraordinary was not that only one of the people recognized the other, nor was it that the two people didn’t share a word. What made it extraordinary was that one of the people was an EMT by the name of Yosef Asor, who had unexpectedly bumped into a man whose life he had saved some six months prior.

Asor is a married young father of two and a career air force officer who lives in Dimona. In addition to his busy workload and family life, Asor volunteers in various organizations that help sick children and visits the elderly in old-age homes. He is also an avid volunteer with United Hatzalah as it is a natural extension of his desire to help others.

Asor recalled the story of the rescue in which he saved the life of a man whom he met once again, six months later in a very unexpected place. “A few weeks after I began volunteering, I received an emergency alert that a person near my location had fainted. I ran out of my house and raced to the scene. I arrived at the address within less than a minute and found a man lying on the floor surrounded by worried friends. It was clear to me that they had been in the middle of a party. I quickly realized that the 40-year-old man was not just unconscious, but pulseless as well. From what we learned later, he had suffered a massive heart attack, but at the time I only saw an unconscious patient and so I began to act accordingly. I immediately began CPR and I enlisted the aid of the man’s stunned friends who I instructed how to do compressions. I attached a defibrillator and then began providing ventilations, all the while continuing to instruct the man’s friends regarding the compressions as needed. One of them told me that this was a goodbye party for the man who was supposed to return to the United States. His family was waiting there for him.”

As he and the friends concentrated on the CPR the defibrillator instructed them to give two shocks to the patient. The shocks were delivered and a minute later the man’s pulse returned. Asor kept up the ventilations and the man began to breathe again. When the ambulance arrived some 15 minutes later, the patient was rushed off to the hospital in stable condition for emergency catheterization.

Six months later, as Asor boarded a bus in Dimona, he began to recognize a fellow passenger but could not place him at first. It took him a few moments to realize that the man getting on the bus behind him, was none other than the CPR patient. He had not only survived but recovered completely and even extended his stay in Israel. The joy that Asor felt was unparalleled, as he watched the man maneuver with ample dexterity the aisle of the bus before taking his seat. Asor likewise took his seat, knowing that his former patient was not only alive but doing very well thanks to his quick response and early intervention.