'I'm a lucky man.' Baldwin man who survived cardiac arrest looks to thank nurse who saved him
Giovanni Feleppa was cooking inside his food truck when he went unconscious and fell. He and his family are now searching for the woman they credit with saving his life.
More Stories
A Baldwin man is recovering after he went into cardiac arrest Friday morning while working inside his food truck.
Giovanni Feleppa and his family are now searching for the woman they credit with saving his life.
Feleppa was cooking a sausage and pepper inside his food truck, the GNG Italian Sausage Hut, when he went unconscious and fell.
Thanks to the quick thinking of a friend, and a retired nurse, he is now recovering.
"I'm a lucky man, I have my life. If it was not for the two of them, I would be dead," Feleppa told News 12 Long Island Sunday night. He added that he is grateful to be alive.
"All of a sudden, I went down. That's all I remember. Like, I was dead man," Feleppa recalled after his heart stopped suddenly as he was cooking for his friend and customer Arthur Corso.
"His eyes went [to the] back behind his head, and he went right down, and I tried to get around the other side to get in. The door was locked," Corso recounted.
Corso then dialed 911 when a woman and her husband stopped to help.
"They knew something was wrong and we got his wife through the window, and she went in and did CPR on him because she was a nurse," Corso said.
The woman, a complete stranger, was able to get Feleppa's pulse back by the time first responders arrived to rush him to the hospital.
"If it was not for them, I would be dead right now, 'cause I will never forget I saw life before my own eyes," Feleppa said.
Feleppa and his family now want to find that woman so they can thank her in person.
"She did just such a wonderful thing. So many people also don't know CPR, so for her to know CPR and start it on someone and actually save him... he's living. So we really, really wish she would come forward," said his daughter, Gia Feleppa.
"I don't know who it was, God or whoever, this lady happened to be there," Feleppa said.
The family is asking anyone who knows that nurse, or if you are that nurse, to go ahead and contact them on their Facebook page so they can thank her in person.
Feleppa's truck parks on Austin Boulevard near Texas Avenue, across from the Texas car wash in Island Park.
