March 11, 2026
Provided image/Temple Health
Temple Health nurse Cindy Zimmerman, right, and Pennsylvania Turnpike maintenance worker John Gallagher have become close friends after helping save the life of a driver who was in cardiac arrest last year.
As the clinical nurse manager at Temple Health-Chestnut Hill Hospital's emergency department, Cindy Zimmerman essentially runs the place like Dana Evans, the charge nurse character in HBO's "The Pitt."
With more than 35 years of nursing experience, Zimmerman has helped people through all kinds of medical emergencies, at work and off the clock, such as the time she was on vacation and assisted someone having a seizure at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
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But one of the first things Zimmerman, of Reading, learned in her emergency medicine training is that if she isn't safe herself, or if she might get hurt trying to help someone, there will be two patients instead of one.
That's why Zimmerman said she might not have stopped to assist a car that had pulled onto the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike had a highway maintenance truck not been parked in front of it. But as she was driving by the scene, near the Downingtown exit on Dec. 10, Zimmerman noticed that a turnpike worker appeared to be holding up the woman in the driver's seat.
"It looked kind of like her neck was slumped, and it just didn't look right," Zimmerman said. "And so I thought, 'You know what, I'm gonna pull over, and if they tell me that I'm nosy, 'Get back in the car, lady,' whatever. No harm, no foul.'"
John Gallagher, a turnpike maintenance worker, and his partner, Doug Sarver, had called for first responders. But before Zimmerman showed up, Gallagher said he was praying, "Please, get the rescue squad here faster. I was rubbing (the driver's) back and just saying, 'This is someone's wife, daughter, sister.'"
Zimmerman immediately saw the woman was agonal breathing – sometimes referred to as "guppy breathing," because the stomach may be moving but there is no actual air movement. The woman was in cardiac arrest and could have died if Gallagher and Sarver hadn't stopped to help her, and if Zimmerman hadn't performed CPR until emergency medical technicians arrived, detected a pulse and got the woman to the hospital.
After the woman was stabilized, Zimmerman gave Gallagher and Sarver the thumbs up. They were nearly in tears, Zimmerman said.
Gallagher, of West Chester, who recently had lost his brother, told Zimmerman that he had been praying for the woman's life.
"He's like, 'You're our guardian angel,'" Zimmerman said. "And I said, 'Let me tell you something. You are her guardian angel, because if your truck hadn't been in front of hers, I wouldn't have stopped either.'"
As she was leaving the scene, Zimmerman spotted the four-digit code that identified Gallagher and Sarver's truck. She reached out to them through the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to thank them.
A few weeks later, Gallagher showed up at Chestnut Hill Hospital with a bunch of flowers and a card for Zimmerman.
"I started to cry," she said. "I was so excited to see him."
Since then, Zimmerman, Gallagher and Sarver have become close friends. They are also making plans to have dinner with the woman they saved on the side of the highway. (They are withholding her name out of respect for her privacy.)
"My wife said this story will never end, because of the friendship that me and Cindy and Doug came away with," Gallagher said.
