Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 9, 1995                   TAG: 9509110102
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN WHO NEARLY DIED IN TRUCK MEETS EARTHBOUND `ANGELS'

In Room 3 of Community Hospital's progressive care unit, Don Arthur met his guardian angel.

Arthur, draped in a blue hospital gown and sitting in a chair, peered through his glasses at the heavyset man with long, curly hair and blue jeans.

He vaguely recognized the stranger, but not from Tuesday, the day the man pulled an unconscious Arthur from his truck and pumped his chest until medics arrived.

"I've seen you around town in that wrecker truck," Arthur, 60, said in a quiet voice.

"Last time I saw you, you weren't talking to me," replied John McKee, 57. "I didn't beat on you too hard, did I?"

Doctors still aren't sure what caused Arthur's heart to race out of control Tuesday. Arthur, an employee of Roanoke's traffic department, was stopped at a red light on Campbell Avenue when he blacked out. His heart stopped beating, and he stopped breathing. In clinical terms, Arthur was dead.

He remembers nothing of what happened, of how two passers-by - McKee, a tow truck driver, and Tywanii Hairston, a former nursing assistant - saved his life by giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Arthur lingered in critical condition that night. Wednesday, he turned the corner. He is now listed in stable condition.

On Friday, his wife, Georgie, greeted McKee in the hospital room. They started to shake hands, but she quickly wrapped her arms around him.

"Oh, bless your heart. You're that angel of mercy," she said, tears in her eyes.

Since learning how McKee and Hairston had helped save her husband's life, she had wanted to meet them. She spoke by phone with Hairston on Wednesday night, and an hour later, Hairston was at the hospital.

"He looked totally different, because his eyes were open and he was talking. That was nice," Hairston said. "I told him I'd never forget his face."

Georgie Arthur says she plans to stay in touch with both of the life-saving "angels."

McKee filled Don Arthur in on the details of what had happened at the scene, how a police officer had threatened to ticket an impatient driver who was honking his horn, how Hairston had jumped into the city truck Arthur had been driving and stopped it from rolling away, how a crowd had gathered.

Arthur hopes to be out of the hospital in a week and back at his jobs working for the city and delivering newspapers for The Roanoke Times.

"When you get ready to go fishin' or dancin', let me know," McKee told him at the end of the visit.