A Comcast agent saved the life of a customer who was having a stroke 800 miles away.
Sometimes a seemingly inconsequential choice can mean the difference between life and death. For Dan Magennis, this choice was deciding to call Comcast before starting his yard work.
The 65 year old from Walker, Michigan knows if he hadn’t placed that call, he might not be here today. All he wanted was help fixing an issue with his cable. What he got instead was his own personal savior — from 800 miles away.
As he connected with Kimberly Williams, a customer service representative in Jackson, Mississippi, he found he couldn’t speak. Then his right leg went numb.
He began panicking and dropped the phone. Dan said -“I would try to say something, and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t move. Within 20-30 seconds, I started to think maybe it was a stroke, but I wasn’t able to tell the representative that.”
But Kimberly already knew something was wrong. Slurred speech was something she’d become familiar with as a teenager when she witnessed her grandmother suffering a stroke. She also knew every second counted.
She immediately began a Google search of first responders in Dan’s area. Several calls later, she got in touch with the Walker Fire Department and stayed on the line with Dan for five minutes before paramedics arrived.
Not even an hour after the call was placed, Dan was in surgery to correct the clogged artery that caused his stroke. Two days later, he walked out of the hospital with almost no lingering effects.