Kimberly Daradics woke up with a start in the early morning hours of March 28, 2025. At the same time she registered that her husband Tony wasn't in bed, she heard a strange noise coming from the living room.
She rushed into the room and found Tony unresponsive. She called 911 and with the guidance of B.C. EHS emergency medical call taker Sophie Gill—a rookie who had just finished her training—Kimberly began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). So began a series of coincidences that read like a television medical drama.
A month earlier Tony had gone to hospital feeling unwell and was scheduled for a stress test. Kimberly had asked her son Buck, a primary care paramedic, how to perform CPR because she had never taken a class.
Buck and his partner Paula Mercer were the first ambulance to hear the call at 5:30 am. and they both recognized the address.
"It was very emotional," said Buck, who was driving that shift.
"I remember saying to him all the way out there 'remember, we have to get there safely,' and 'you know what you're doing, we've got this,'" Mercer said. The Daradics' house was tricky to find, but Buck knew where he was going, and knew exactly where in the house his mother and father would be. When they arrived, Kimberly was still performing CPR with the calm reassurance from call-taker Gill on the phone.
When Buck's colleagues realized he was responding to a family emergency, a second ambulance was called—and that crew had arrived early for their shift that morning, so they responded immediately.
Kimberly didn't realize at first that it was Buck who came to the house, she was so focused on pumping Tony's chest. Buck took over CPR while Mercer used an automated external defibrillator (AED) to shock Tony's heart; after two shocks they had a pulse. With the assistance of first responders from Beaver Creek Volunteer Fire Department they transported Tony to West Coast General Hospital where an air ambulance transported him to Victoria.
Buck Daradics went home, ate a quick breakfast and drove to Victoria to join his parents. By the time he arrived Tony had received a stent in his heart and he was sitting up in bed.
On Tuesday, June 10, in a room full of first responders and family members, Kimberly was presented with a Vital Links award. These awards are presented by B.C. EHS to honour the skilful actions of one or more bystanders at a cardiac arrest emergency. Among the people presenting the award was Buck's mother-in-law, Deb Roberts, who is usually the paramedic working with Mercer. Roberts had been working as the lead for Youth Pathways and the High School EMR Program for BC EHS.
"You have every single first responder (involved) in this group," said Lyndsay Esson, Oceanside operations manager for B.C. EHS. "We are a very data-driven, scientific group of people and everyone's saying that this whole event was a miracle."
More than 60,000 Canadians suffer out-of-hospital cardiac events each year and CPR or use of an AED increases the chance of survival by 50 percent, Roberts said.
"Kim gave Tony a chance at survival because she acted quickly and courageously. As paramedics and dispatchers these opportunities to celebrate a miraculous recovery like this and an outcome as successful as this don't happen as often as we would like," Roberts said.
People who perform bystander CPR "are our vital link to keeping this patient alive until we can get there."
Tony remembers a bit of the helicopter ride and that's it. It wasn't until after his surgery when he was still experiencing chest pain that an x-ray revealed he had 10 of 12 broken ribs from his wife's CPR.
Kimberly smiled. "He (son Buck) always said if you're not breaking ribs you're not doing it right. I heard breaking ribs and I knew I was doing it right."
