Second Chance to Dance

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Community

Sarah Katzenmaier has always been crazy for Halloween. 

“My birthday is on October 29, so I’ve always celebrated with Halloween-themed birthday parties,” she explained. “I love everything about it — vampires, zombies, and I love horror, especially Stephen King.” 

Unsurprisingly, Katzenmaier, a retiree from IBM and active community volunteer, has enthusiastically joined the zombie brigade in Lexington’s annual Thriller Parade for years. For years on repeat, she joined hundreds of others who lay in wait on Main Street for multiple performers playing Michael Jackson and Ola Ray to emerge and lead the iconic dance from Jackson’s “Thriller” video. In 2021, sporting her her signature royal blue zombie bridesmaid costume, she repeated her more-than-a-decade-long routine of claiming a space outside the Kentucky Theatre, while her husband, at her urging, waited for her several blocks away on the parade route to capture her on video. From there, she has no memory of the next week of her life. 

“I always make sure to get a couple of pictures when I emerge from my ‘grave.’ Though I made it to the street and did the dance all the way through almost once, I don’t remember anything after that last picture,” she said. 

About 500 feet from where she began dancing, Katzenmaier suddenly collapsed, her heart stopping due to a life-threatening emergency called sudden cardiac arrest. 

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) happens when the heart’s electrical system malfunctions and the heart suddenly stops beating. According to the Mayo Clinic, SCA is different from a heart attack. During a heart attack, blood flow to the heart is blocked, but the heart continues to beat. The damage sustained by the heart during a heart attack does not always, but definitely can, cause cardiac arrest. A person experiencing a heart attack may remain conscious while experiencing pain, shortness of breath, and other symptoms. Alternately, someone experiencing SCA immediately collapses and is unresponsive. While SCA can be related to coronary artery disease, congenital heart issues, and other heart attack risk factors, SCA can strike individuals of any age and health status with no warning. 

The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation states that SCA is the third leading cause of death in the United States, and because of its sudden nature, only 10% of victims survive. However, survival rates of SCA triple with quick bystander intervention — something that Katzenmaier knows very well. Charlotte Callan was the bystander that helped save her life.

Callan, a research information security analyst at the University of Kentucky with an M.S. in medical science, was attending the parade with friends and standing close to the spot where Katzenmaier fell. After Katzenmaier collapsed, Callan — who had very recently completed CPR training — came over immediately and started doing the old-fashioned process of clearing her airway and rolling her on her side.

Because of the crowds at the parade, it took EMS longer than normal to reach Katzenmaier, and Callan performed constant compressions for around ten to twelve minutes. Thanks to Callan, EMS was able to shock Katzenmaier’s heart into rhythm and get her to the hospital, where the medical team was able to save her life.

“At the beginning, it was just too painful to hear all the details,” Katzenmaier recalled. “One of the hardest things I had to overcome was how to reach out to Charlotte.

“I did not know what to say to this woman,” she continued. “It was harder, I think, than almost any other part of the whole thing. What do you say to the stranger who saved your life, you know? It’s just so emotional.”

Eventually, Katzenmaier and her family hosted a dinner with Callan so that they could properly thank her, and two women have been friends ever since. Over the past five years, the survivor/bystander duo has become increasingly involved with the American Heart Association, regularly telling their story in order to highlight the importance of bystander intervention and CPR training.

During this time, Katzenmaier was also learning more about SCA and had become active in a national Facebook group for SCA survivors. Through the group she met Greg Coon, whose wife Julie has also survived SCA thanks to quick actions from bystanders who not only performed CPR but also located and used an automated external defibrillator (AED) to revive her. The Coons had started a nonprofit organization called Cardiac Crusade, with the purpose of helping locate and map AEDs so they can be quickly and easily located by 911 operators. 

AEDs are easy-to-use devices that provide an electric shock to a person’s heart in order to reestablish its rhythm. For individuals experiencing SCA, quick application of an AED greatly increases the chance of survival. In communities where Cardiac Crusade has established groups, such as Boston and Buffalo, survival rates of SCA have risen from less than 10% to more than 60%. Katzenmaier was so impressed with the statistics that she decided to bring her own branch of Cardinal Crusade to Lexington, under the name Cardiac Cats.

“The point of locating and verifying AEDs is to provide the data to 911 operators so when they answer a call and the person on the other end of the line is trying to help someone in cardiac arrest, they can see where the nearest AED is located and help them find it, increasing the odds that the patient survives,” said Katzenmaier. 

“AEDs are located in public and private locations — many businesses have them but there is no easy way to find one when it’s an emergency,” she added. Volunteers for the organization take a quick and easy online training in order to get started, then download an app to log and verify AEDs throughout the city.

Another part of the mission of Cardiac Cats is to encourage more businesses to install AEDs. Cardiac Crusade estimates that there are approximately 3.2 million AEDs in public places in the United States, but that 30 million are needed for meaningful coverage. 

Katzenmaier, full of energy and passion for the cause, has worked hard to get the word out about Cardiac Cats, sharing her story with everyone from the city council to the Governor’s Office, college and university administrators, neighborhood associations, and everyone in between. To that end, she has planned a kickoff event for Cardiac Cats that will take place in October — almost five years exactly since her sudden cardiac arrest. On Friday, Oct. 15, Cardiac Cats will host a campaign kickoff event at West Sixth Brewing. Anyone interested in learning more about the initiative and importance of CPR and AED training, or helping map AEDs in the city, is encouraged to attend. 

“The campaign will run through Valentine’s Day, and we want to have as many AEDs mapped as possible by then,” said Katzenmaier.

Katzenmaier’s unexpected cardiac arrest has taught her how important it is that bystanders are not only willing to take action but are trained and feel comfortable stepping up.  

“We want to get the word out about Cardiac Cats and the importance of CPR and AED training, and get as many people to help out as we can,” she said. “The more volunteers we have the more AEDs we can locate, and when more people are also trained in CPR, more lives can be saved.”