STARS Air Ambulance saves the life of a former lottery grand prize winner

STARS Air Ambulance Lottery grand prize winner has seen firsthand how the life-saving organization’s funds are spent, after he went from supporter to patient earlier this year.Neil Lund and his wife Mona Cardinal have purchased STARS lottery tickets for 25 years and in 2014, they won a Calgary dream home worth $1.3 million.Lund says they never missed a year since 2008 when buying tickets, because someday he “might need” medical help from the organization.That day came on Jan.

26, 2023.“We just came back from uptown,” says Lund, “And I went in (to the garage) and sat down and (Mona) was out shoveling snow because I couldn’t, and about 10 minutes after I sat down, that’s when the heart problems started.”Cardinal says Lund started to yell for her.“He said ‘Mona, I don’t feel good,’ so I ran into the garage to see what was going on and by that time he had fallen over,” Cardinal said. “I got him back up and went out to the truck to call 911.” Read more: Albertan thanks STARS Air Ambulance for saving her life a decade after rural crash When paramedics arrived at their Didsbury home, about 60 kilometres north of Calgary, Cardinal says Neil’s heartbeat was just 22 beats per minute.

A normal, healthy resting heart rate for an adult is 60 to 100.“They loaded him in the ambulance, got him all hooked up and everything and they come back and said to me that he was stable, so they were going to try and get him to Calgary by ambulance.”Cardinal recalls paramedics calling moments after leaving to tell her that her husband had passed out twice on the way to Calgary, forcing paramedics to turn around and take Lund to the Didsbury hospital.“They got him into emergency and got Dr.