By Robert Anderson
The Roanoke Times (Virginia)
ROANOKE, Va. — The finish line loomed for Ed Deitch.
He nearly crossed it.
For good.
Running the half-marathon in last year’s Blue Ridge Marathon in Roanoke, the 65-year-old high school history teacher and Army veteran from Northern Virginia suffered a heart attack and collapsed face-first onto the Norfolk Avenue pavement 100 yards short of completing the race.
Deitch was about to meet his maker.
Instead, he met Colette Carver.
And the Roanoke woman is a big reason why Deitch will be back on the starting line today.
April 16, 2011, was a miserable morning in the Roanoke Valley. Between 2 and 3 inches of rain fell in a brief period, flooding roadways, parking lots and basements.
Conditions were so poor that race organizers called off the event with about 100 runners still on the course.
Carver, her husband, Bob Welch, and their 5-year-old son, Bobby, had no plans to attend the marathon until the weather worsened.
“Bob said, ‘Let’s go watch the finish. I think it’s good to support people. It’s raining. It’s terrible. Nobody’s going to be there,’” Carver said.
Carver had been at the finish line for only five minutes when she noticed a solitary figure lurching in her direction.
It was Deitch, who was competing in just his second half-marathon.
“I could see that he was slowing down,” she said. “His color was really poor. I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy’s going to fall.’ He didn’t put his hands out to catch himself. He just hit the ground and kind of curled up.”
Carver uncoiled like a spring.
A nurse practitioner who works in ambulatory care with a family practice, Carver began administering CPR. Within two minutes, paramedics were on the scene.
Deitch was placed in an ambulance, where a defibrillator was used to restore his heartbeat. Within five minutes, he was transported to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where after two days of induced hypothermia, he regained consciousness.
“It was a miracle, because he woke up like nothing happened,” said Deitch’s wife, Margie. “It was bizarre.”
Deitch was hospitalized for a week, then rested at the Vinton home of his daughter, Bethany Cook, before returning to Sterling, just outside Washington.
His first order of business after being discharged from the hospital was to summon Carver and others responsible for his recovery to his daughter’s home for a moment of truly heartfelt gratitude.
“How do you thank people for bringing you back from the dead?” Deitch said. “It’s just overwhelming.”
Deitch had two stents inserted to improve the blood flow in two arteries that were 70 percent and 90 percent blocked. A pilot and part-time flight instructor, he has gone through cardiac rehabilitation, a nuclear stress test and angiography so the Federal Aviation Administration would clear him to fly.
He has regained his wings — and his legs.
When the Blue Ridge Marathon gets the starting gun today, Deitch will be participating.
He plans to walk the 13.1 miles that make up the half-marathon. At least that’s what he’s telling his family.
“I’ve been working out six days a week getting ready for this race,” he said. “The game plan is to mostly walk it. There’s some steep downhill sections. I may jog part of that. We’ll see how it plays out.”
Life has played in Deitch’s favor before.
While stationed in Fort Jackson, S.C., in the 1960s, Deitch was ticketed for a tour of duty in Vietnam before a major changed the order and deployed him to Turkey at the last minute.
“At that time, everybody was going to Vietnam,” Deitch said. “I lucked out. There wasn’t hardly anyone in Fort Jackson who didn’t come up to me and say, ‘Are you the lieutenant who’s going to Turkey? ‘Who do you know?’
“I said, ‘Maj. Love.’ That was his name — Maj. Love.”
In 2001, Deitch pulled into his driveway and was walking to the mailbox when his car rolled over him on the pavement, ripping his clothes to shreds and leaving his body battered but unbroken.
“Three days after 9/11,” he noted. “The car was following me down the driveway and ran me over.”
However, Deitch’s heart attack was his closest call yet.
Cook, who had given birth to her second son three months earlier, had a firsthand view of his collapse. She’d run with her father for almost the entire race until he sped up near the finish line.
“I did see him go down, but I didn’t realize it was him until I was basically on top of him,” she said. “Because it was raining so hard, I had taken my glasses off.
“If it had happened 10 minutes earlier, we would have literally been by ourselves,”
Instead, something brought a nurse to the exact spot at the exact moment when Deitch suffered his heart attack.
Carver had a hand in saving Deitch’s life. On Monday, exactly one year to the day since Deitch was stricken, Carver was honored with a Roanoke City Council resolution despite her best efforts to downplay her role.
“The two minutes before EMS gets there, I don’t know if that two minutes makes or breaks you, but it only takes four minutes to die,” she said. “So I would say, yeah, I probably played a significant role. Just say I was glad to be there.”
Today, Deitch will stand on the exact spot where he collapsed a year ago. Blood will not be all that courses through his system.
“I’m looking forward to see exactly where it happened,” he said. “I suspect it will be very emotional for me. I’ve got some unfinished business.”
And next year, perhaps a full marathon, 26.2 miles?
“I saw a sticker on the way out,” Deitch said. “It said, ’13.1, I’m only half crazy.’ Right now, a half is fine for me.”
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