John de St. Germain was fixing a light at his part-time job at the Bike Mart in McKinney in April of last year, when nearly 300 volts of energy traveled through his body. His heart stopped.
His coworker had served as a medic in the military and immediately jumped into action. She began chest compressions, or CPR, to help blood flow through his body while the store’s general manager called 911.
Given the circumstances, John was lucky.
“When your heart stops, you have seconds, maybe minutes to get things going again or you're just not going to make it,” John said.
Soon, McKinney police officers arrived to assist while paramedics were on their way. The next thing de St. Germain knew, he was in the intensive care unit at Baylor, Scott and White in McKinney.
By the time he was rushed to the emergency room, his wife, Diane, was already there. She was steered to the family room where she anxiously awaited updates on her husband, who she affectionately called Jody. She learned they’d have to do CPR and use a device to shock John’s heart back into rhythm, known as an AED.
“When you’re sitting there by yourself and the chaplain comes in, we don’t know what’s going on or what’s happened or what's going to happen,” she said. “It was quite scary. When I did get to see him, it was an enormous relief because, all things considered, he was still my Jody.”
Outcomes like John’s don’t happen often. In 2024, McKinney's cardiac survival rate was just one in 10.
That was a year into the McKinney Fire Department’s effort to increase a survival rate that was below the national average at the time. Then, the city invited community members to be part of the solution.
Last year, the city’s cardiac survival rate was more than four in 10 people — a more than 300% increase. EMS officials said the broad effort is already saving lives in McKinney, and they hope it inspires other cities to follow McKinney’s lead.
Getting life-saving care to people quicker
While it typically takes months to recover from a heart attack, de St. Germain recovered in weeks. First responders he spoke to said the speed of his recovery was shocking, and many noted surviving at all was impressive.
Time is one of the most important factors when responding to cardiac arrest, but there are a lot of things that can get in the way of a quick response – including no one being around to notice someone collapsed, people not being sure what to do in the situation and paramedics not being able to get there as quickly as possible.
John de St. Germain’s coworkers didn’t hesitate, and the 911 operator and police officers responding to the call were all trained for this type of incident.
“If it wasn’t for all of them…things would be different right now,” he said.
John benefitted from some of the earliest steps McKinney took to improve its cardiac survival rate.
The city started by adjusting how 911 dispatchers respond to these types of calls. While part of the change was to the city’s emergency response system, the fire department also provided education and training to help dispatchers help the people who call in provide CPR or use an AED.
Then, the city started training police officers in how to respond.
Even though those changes were already helping people like John de St. Germain, the city was far from done making improvements.
The McKinney fire department was working towards becoming what’s known as a “four-minute community,” where someone who collapses from cardiac arrest can receive care within just a few minutes.
As part of the effort, the city put AEDs in all city buildings and police cars, making the life-saving devices more accessible.
But the fire department also knew it would need more help than it could get from other first responders — so it invited community members to be part of the solution.
Neighbors into heroes
Every month, the department hosts a free “Ready to React” class that teaches community members some basic first aid skills, like how to perform CPR and use an AED, and even how to stop bleeding. During a recent lesson, Pat O’Reilly was one of two instructors providing hands-on training to a class of 20 McKinney residents.
“I’ve come across a couple of car accidents, and there are 10 people standing around doing nothing,” O’Reilly said. “I walked up and started doing something and other people said, ‘What can I do to help?’ We want that person. That’s what we’re trying to train to.”
O’Reilly – a certified emergency medical responder, or EMR, and a Citizen’s Fire Academy alum who volunteers with the department – moved with confidence as he talked community members through checking the scene for safety, seeing if the person is responsive, calling 911 or telling someone around them to call 911 and performing CPR.
Community members took turns joining him on the floor. O’Reilly made sure the person practicing CPR was doing it properly before answering questions from the group and explaining why responding quickly is so important.
“For every minute that you don’t do chest compressions, their survival rate goes down 10%,” O’Reilly said. “We want to get hands on chest within 15 seconds if at all possible.”
He explained that most cardiac arrests — about 70% — happen at home, which is why bystander CPR can be the difference between life and death.
Heide Mpofu, a McKinney resident who attended a class earlier this year, said it gave her the knowledge and confidence needed during emergency situations.
“You see someone hurt, you want to take care of them,” she said. “But, then there’s also that fear ‘I don’t want to make things worse.’ Taking this class takes away that fear.”
The department wants to train as many people in McKinney as possible. O’Reilly said about 5,000 people have taken the class since it began – but that number keeps steadily growing. Two of the three Ready to React classes left in 2026 are already completely full.
The department started to offer Ready to React classes in 2019, but the class has become one of many ways for community members to join the city’s effort.
In early 2025, the city introduced the GoodSAM app for people who are trained in CPR. The app notifies users when someone nearby has a heart attack so they can provide CPR or even access an AED if it’s close enough.
In May, the city launched the “Neighborhood Heroes Program,” providing community members with AEDs to keep on hand.
“That AED will be theirs,” said Ben Jones, a battalion chief with the McKinney Fire department’s EMS division. “They can keep it in their car. They can keep it in the house. They can carry it with them to their soccer game.”
Jones and other EMS officials want to get a total of 400 AEDs out to willing community members – which would cost the city about $1 million. In July, the city got the funding necessary to purchase 150 AEDs and has since distributed two-thirds of the devices to doctors, nurses, other trained medical professionals and community members.
“This puts AEDs everywhere in the city,” Jones said. “It doesn’t limit it to a socioeconomic status or the haves or have-nots.”
Carrolton is the only other North Texas city that’s taking part in the four-minute community initiative, according to Jones.
“I hope other places can see that we don’t need to limit our community by putting ceilings or certain expectations on them and understand that people want to do good,” Jones said. “People inherently want to help. We can exponentially grow our force if we involve the community.”
McKinney increases cardiac survival rate
McKinney has a growing group of heart attack survivors that credit the city with saving their lives. Among them is Jim Millsap, a 67-year-old Army veteran from Oklahoma.
Last year in August, Millsap was travelling through McKinney with his son when his heart stopped.
“I literally died in his car,” he said. “Luckily, there were two officers close by…they had one of those AEDs with them.”
Millsap was in serious condition, despite the early intervention. When his two other children joined his son at Baylor, Scott and White in McKinney, Millsap was hooked to several machines in a hospital room. He said doctors prepared his kids for the potential that he would die in that room.
However, less than two weeks later, Millsap woke up.
Millsap said he believes he was meant to be in McKinney that day. He said if he had been at home, his daughter would have found him after it was too late.
“From what I understood, the officers had just completed training on the AEDs five months before my heart attack,” he said. “I was the first survivor. I was the first person to have a heart attack that they responded to after that training."
Ben Jones said support and participation from community members has been critical to the success of the city's effort.
“When we started this initiative two years ago, I put a timeline of about five years before we’d be to this point,” he said. “It just shows what kind of a community we live in.”
Jones said McKinney still has a lot of work to do to keep improving, but he already considers the effort successful.
“If we got a chance to impact one person’s life, then it was worth every bit of it,” Jones said. “That’s one more life that gets to spend one more Christmas, it gets to spend one more birthday with their loved ones. I don’t know how you measure success other than human life and how do you really put a value on that.”
Survivors like Millsap and John de St. Germain said they’re grateful to see McKinney investing so much time and resources into this effort.
Over a year after John de St. Germain’s heart attack, he sat with his wife, Diane, in their temporary home at an RV park in East Texas.
“When I look at Diane, and I look, at our three little doggies, I mean, we wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the city of McKinney doing what they do,” he said.
Diane de St. Germain held her husband’s hand as their French bulldogs – GiGi, TJ and BuBu – clambered for their attention. The de St. Germain’s talk about their plans to build a new house in Canton – a dream of theirs they almost didn’t get to see.
“It means everything to us,” she said. “We’ve learned to appreciate how much other people impact your life and can impact your life.”
