A quick trip to Kroger turned into a life-saving situation for a League City man Thursday. Justin Thomas said he was at the store off East League City Parkway to buy milk for his twins. “I heard someone scream out,” Thomas said. “So, I moved toward the direction of the scream then I saw a lady splayed out on the floor.”

Thomas said he jumped into action. Relying on his former medical background and ten years of service with the U.S. Coast Guard, he began administering CPR.

“I literally saw where her sternum was. I put my forearm with my fingers back and just started pumping her chest,” Thomas said.

The woman appeared to be in cardiac arrest, Thomas said. He and another customer in the store took turns administering chest compressions until paramedics arrived.

Thomas said he has since heard from the woman’s family.

“The doctors told her that if it wasn’t for the quick actions, she wouldn’t have made it,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he is an electrician and is required to know CPR for work. He said he renews his training and certification every year.

Full Story here.

I’ve been debating starting a ‘hero of the week’ blog tradition so as to better track the odds-defying heroics of our global community. One of the advantages of this is I have a very simple, arguably low bar for heroism- placed relative to my own cowardice and antisocial tendencies. This is not to say that I am reluctant to call people out for NOT being a hero. But if you meet the conditions of my arbitrary definition then you’ve got a pretty good shot.  A huge part of my ranking system is context. Kid alerts Mom that the house is on fire? Not a hero. What was the kid going to do? Run away? Leave mom, dad and dog to burn? Dumb kid. Did his part and nothing more.

 Now the bar for heroics drops considerably once the setting changes from family or friend to stranger. If we have a kid running into a neighbor’s house to alert them that their house is on fire, then that kid’s a hero! Children don’t develop perspective until they’re like 15, neighbors can be strange and annoying, and it would have been easy for them to just let the Jones’ house burn to a crisp and go back inside to play Xbox. 

In our brief news story, there are are multiple elements that make this man’s actions ‘heroic’; however, the main essence of this story, the secret sauce of heroes if you will, is that this all takes place in a grocery story. Now, as any slightly familiar reader is aware, I love, love, love, a good grocery store medical emergency. 

Excluding the minority of fanatics in the room, grocery stores are top 3 places where we are surrounded by people and want NOTHING to do with them (gym, laundromat, grocery store in no particular order). When I go to a grocery store I have a short list of goals, a plan I like to stick to no matter the cost: find the milk, buy too much milk, buy a bunch of frozen food for ‘emergencies’, make a big show of touching some fruit, reward myself for touching fruit with buying a donut, and then get the fuck out. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to make eye contact, I don’t even want to acknowledge the fact that I’m in a grocery store. My ideal time to go grocery shopping is Sunday morning when everybody is at church and 78% of my body still thinks it’s asleep. I wake up from that bad dream with a a couple frozen pies, 6 gallons of milk and donut. You get the point.

The level of drive, social obligation, and adrenaline I’d need to feel to get involved in anyone’s business, let alone an unconscious, dying person’s business while grocery shopping is incalculable. 

So let’s get to our hero. Our unquestionable, unchallenged, undaunted hero. This guy’s out shopping for milk for his twins. Did he plan on having twins? Probably not! Does he hate being a father of twins? Probably not! But I think it’s fair to say it’s a little more work than he originally expected. He’s left his house and the cries of his milk-starved clones with their chapped, milk-deprived lips ,only to find a person in desperate need of help. In spite of his exhaustion, his milk tunnel vision, the inevitable obsession with human overpopulation that comes with having twins, he steps up, performs CPR and saves a life. I’m so impressed by this, I’m not even going to put an *asterisk* next to it because anybody who gets re-certified for CPR every year better damn well use it when the occasion arises. 

Well done super hero grocery man. Enjoy a blog beer on me. Please be around when my future wife inevitably has our child in aisle 4.