By Angela Ruggiero
East Bay Times
PINOLE, Calif. — Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola was riding home from the San Francisco Airport Tuesday night after a medical conference when her Lyft driver asked her where the nearest hospital was.
The man, Mir Peerzada, 35, of Modesto, was clutching his chest and had labored breathing as he tried to open his window for fresh air. Olayiwola, a professor at University of California, San Francisco, who also has a clinic at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, recognized that the man was in serious pain -- he was having a heart attack.
Peerzada said he wanted to first take his ride home, to Hercules, and then drive himself to the nearest hospital. But Olayiwola said she knew the situation was serious.
“I told her, I’m not feeling good I have chest pain and I have pressure on my arm,” Peerzada said. “She helped me. She called 911.”
She insisted that he pull over in Pinole, and had him relax and open his window to get fresh air. She said he was very lucid as she tried to get basic information from him: his name, age, wife’s name and number, as they waited for an ambulance on the side of the road.
As a doctor, she said she was trained to keep patients calm; if he got more anxious the situation could get worse.
“Immediately, I thought: What if someone else was here, and didn’t know what to do? We were on a four lane highway, a lot of scary things could have happened,” she said.
By the time they pulled over, his symptoms were escalating. When emergency personnel did arrive, she was able to call Peerzada’s wife and brother, who thanked her for staying with him. The thought never crossed her mind to leave, she said.
Peerzada said he had a similar episode just two weeks before, but said his two passengers left and didn’t help him, and he then drove himself to the hospital.
Now, Olayiwola is helping Peerzada find a new doctor to carefully monitor his health. Peerzada said he’s very happy Olayiwola was his passenger that night. He said Friday morning that he’s feeling better after being discharged from the hospital Thursday.
It turns out, she didn’t reveal she was a doctor to him until the next day. Olayiwola said the thought didn’t come to her, as she was concerned for their safety and Peerzada’s health.
Firefighters drove Olayiwola to a nearby grocery store parking lot, at this point past midnight Wednesday morning, where her husband picked her up. She nearly forgot her suitcase in Peerzada’s car.
Lyft spokesman Scott Coriell said the company is grateful Peerzada is doing well, and comment Olayiwola for her heroism.
When Olayiwola first called up the ride-sharing phone app at SFO, the first driver she got wanted to know where she was headed to first. Olayiwola knew drivers weren’t supposed to ask that and cancelled the ride.
“I think it was all supposed to happen for a reason,” she said.
The doctor also wrote about the event on her blog.
Copyright 2017 East Bay Times