Some say everyday miracles are predestined. Time and distance do not matter. All that's necessary is readiness, the right circumstance for the appointed encounter. And it can happen anywhere -- on the street, on the job, even on a baseball diamond.
In 1999, 11-year-old Kevin Stephan was a bat boy for his younger brother's Little League team in Lancaster, New York. It was an early evening in late July. The sun slanting across the field. The game unfolding in baseball time. Kevin was standing on the grass away from the plate, where another youngster was warming up. Swinging his bat back and forth, giving it all the power an elementary school kid could muster. The boy brought the bat back hard and hit Kevin square in the chest.
His heart stopped.
When Kevin fell to the ground, the mother of one of the players rushed out of the stands to his aid. Penny Brown hadn't planned to be there that day, but at the last minute, her shift at the hospital had been changed, and she was given the night off. Penny bent over the unconscious boy, his face already starting to turn blue, and administered CPR, breathing into his mouth and administering chest compressions.
And he came back.
It was a good thing, for a good kid. Kevin wasn't just a volunteer for his brother's baseball team -- he was a Boy Scout, one who went on to achieve Scouting's highest rank, Eagle. He became a volunteer junior firefighter, learning some of the emergency first-aid techniques that had saved his life. He studied hard in school and was saving money for college by working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. He liked the people, but the work could be hard and pretty routine. Until the afternoon of January 27, 2006.
Kevin, now 17, was working in the kitchen when he heard people screaming, customers in confusion, employees rushing toward a table. He hustled into the main room and saw a woman there, her face turning blue, her hands at her throat. She was choking.
Quickly Kevin stepped behind her, wrapped his arms around her and clasped his hands. Then, using skills he'd first learned in Scouts, he jerked inward and up, once, twice, administering the Heimlich maneuver. The food that was trapped in the woman's throat was freed. The color began to return to her face.
"The food was stuck. I couldn't breathe," she said. She thought she was dying. "I was very frightened