By Susan Szalewski
Omaha World-Herald
OMAHA — When the firefighters and paramedics of Omaha Fire Station No. 42 last saw Mark Peters, his pickup truck had plowed into a pole near Maplewood Boulevard and West Maple Road.
His heart had stopped. He wasn’t breathing. Rescuers described him as clinically dead.
But there they were Monday — six days after the crash — playing foosball at the fire station with the 46-year-old man who should have been dead.
It was hard to believe, all six rescuers said. On Tuesday, they performed CPR and shocked his blue body back to life. On Monday, Peters showed up at the fire station near 102nd Street and West Maple Road to shake their hands.
“Thank you guys very, very, very much,” Peters said.
Fire officials did not expect him to live when they dropped him off last week at the hospital.
On Saturday, he regained consciousness. He had suffered a heart attack while driving to pick up his 15-year-old daughter, Cassie, at Burke High School.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” said Mike Tafoya, a fire apparatus engineer. “It was that bad.”
The front of the pickup wrapped around the light pole the vehicle had struck. The impact pushed the light pole forward and slammed Peters into the steering wheel, breaking it.
“You deformed the heck out of it,” Capt. Scott Clifton told Peters on Monday.
Clifton said that in his 24 years of service he had seen others who were as bad off as Peters was when he was rescued, but none of them had made it out of the hospital alive.
The firefighters arrived at the crash scene in minutes. They pulled Peters from the pickup, laid him on the ground and began resuscitation efforts that continued in the ambulance. After a second shock from a defibrillator, Peters’ heart started beating on its own. His breathing resumed.
Peters said he had no idea how close he’d come to dying.
“I feel real lucky.”
Peters had only been out of the Nebraska Medical Center for about an hour when he stopped by the fire station about 7 p.m. Monday. He still wore the blue hospital slippers and identification bracelet.
After extending his thanks, Peters noticed the foosball table at the fire station and asked if he could play a game with the firefighters. Three obliged.
Among the other rescuers who saw Peters last week and again on Monday were firefighter Jim Narak, acting Capt. Rich Livengood and paramedics Chris Stucker and Elizabeth Peterson.
Peters’ girlfriend of 13 years, Ralene Cozad of Henderson, Iowa, accompanied him to the fire station. She said she would help Peters as he recovers.
He has a lot to live for. Peters has a son, Chris, 17, in Fort Collins, Colo., and an 88-year-old father he helps care for.