Woman Seeks Man Who Saved Her Brother’s Life

Sandy Rothwell wants to thank the good Samaritan who saved her brother’s life, but she doesn’t know who he is.

The kind soul, driving a pickup truck, stopped to help when Tony Tryon, 41, suffered a heart attack while riding his bicycle home from work Saturday, Rothwell said. The man promptly loaded Tryon and his bicycle into the truck, drove the stricken man to the nearest hospital, saw that he was getting appropriate care and then left, after leaving the bicycle in the emergency room.

Doctors have told the family that if 20 or 30 more minutes had elapsed before her brother reached help, he would have died, Rothwell said.

“That man literally saved Tony’s life, and we have no way to thank him,” she said.

Rothwell’s family is fully aware of just how close a call it was, she said.

Three months ago a younger brother, Steve, died of a heart attack at age 40, she said. Their father died of a heart attack when he was 37 years old.

Tryon, a wiry fellow who has always led an active life, was felled by several blood clots that lodged in his heart, she said. The same thing--thrombosis--caused her father’s and other brother’s fatal heart attacks, Rothwell said.

Her brother was bicycling home to Buena Park along Knott Avenue from an Anaheim savings and loan institution that he manages about 5:30 p.m. Saturday when the attack occurred, she said.

The good Samaritan apparently saw Tryon lying on the ground next to his bike and stopped to ask if he could help, Rothwell said. Her brother was “in a lot of pain” and asked the man to drive him home, but as the pain got worse, he told the man to instead take him to La Palma Intercommunity Hospital.

As the pain got more intense, her brother said he had better go to the nearest hospital, Rothwell said.

“This man flipped a U-turn and even ran red lights to get him there,” to Buena Park Community Hospital, as quickly as possible, she said.

Tryon was listed in stable but guarded condition Tuesday afternoon in the intensive care unit.

The family has tried through the hospital to locate Tryon’s helper, but the man left no name and has not called back, Rothwell said. However, in the truck, the driver told her brother that he recently had had a motorcycle accident in which he struck his head and that no one had stopped to help him as he lay unconscious on the ground.

The driver told her brother, “I said: ‘I’ll never go by someone who needs help again,’ ” Rothwell said.

She said that her brother is still very ill but that the family is optimistic he will recover.

“My feeling is God didn’t want him to die or He wouldn’t have had this guy there to help him,” Rothwell said. “Miracles do happen, and that’s what happened Saturday.”