ROME, GA., April 28, 2022 – It was supposed to be a simple dinner out, nothing special, just a quick Monday meal to ease back into the work week. Instead, Rhonda and Ronnie Wallace's dinner turned into a front-seat witness to a miracle in the making.
The couple were in a booth at Las Palmas, enjoying small talk while they waited for their order. In front of them was a young family. Across the aisle was an older couple, enjoying a frozen drink with their meal.
Without warning, the hum of the restaurant was interrupted by an odd, cough-like noise. The Wallaces turned in the direction of the noise to see the older man across the aisle having difficulty. His wife stood quickly and talked to him. The man appeared to be disoriented. Something was wrong.
The man collapsed, his face hitting the table as his wife screamed. Ronnie Wallace jumped up to help just as the man fell to the floor, and another restaurant patron, a young woman with blond hair, rushed to the man's side.
"I'm a nurse," she told the man's wife and his helpers. "Let me see if I can help."
The young nurse quickly took charge of the scene. She assessed the man and attempted to ask his distraught wife questions. At first, the nurse thought the man may have food stuck in his airway.
She instructed Wallace to attempt the Heimlich maneuver. When that didn't work, Wallace gently placed the man on the floor. The nurse knelt beside him and began to administer CPR. She requested ice water from a table, grabbed a cloth and saturated it in the cold water, then swabbed his face with the cool liquid.
The situation looked dire, Rhonda Wallace said.
"It looked like it was not going to have a good outcome," she said. But after about three minutes of continual CPR, the man opened his eyes. The nurse turned her restaurant patient on his side. He regurgitated. The compassionate nurse continued to tend to the man while she and Ronnie Wallace continued to talk to him to keep him alert until first responders arrived.
When the Rome Fire Department and Atrium Health Floyd EMS arrived, the nurse continued in her medical mindset. She delivered a medical report to the paramedics, explaining what had happened and the medical interventions she had performed, before the man was taken to the ambulance for further assessment.
Rhonda Wallace, an Atrium Health Floyd board member, later discovered that the take-charge nurse was Karli Lansdell, an Atrium Health Floyd school nurse.
"She was there with her husband and child," she said. "She didn't have to get up, but she did. She did it very gracefully, and she just had a very kind spirit about her. She said, 'Hi, I'm a nurse. Let me see if I can help.' From that moment on she just sort of took charge to see what she could do and told others what to do."
"We have so many employees at Atrium Health Floyd just like that," Rhonda Wallace added. "They do things they aren't asked to do, that they don't get paid to do. They don't do it for acknowledgement. They do it because, like Karli, they are kind, compassionate people."