Wayne Spears (left) smiles as he listens to Brock Nulph tell how he used CPR to save Spears' life after he went into cardiac arrest.

ENID, Okla. — In life, a person might get the opportunity to do something truly for the greater good of mankind. For a northern Oklahoma man who was already hailed for thwarting a 2014 robbery, his heroism didn’t stop there. 

On Sept. 23, coworkers Brock Nulph and Wayne Spears were at a grocery store in Enid, stocking shelves.

“Less than five minutes later, I see him (Spears) fall,” Nulph said. “He hit the shelf with his head and he was snoring. I tapped him, moved him and when he woke up, he was gasping for air.”

Nulph called 911 as he watched his friend and coworker struggle. Following dispatch’s order, Nulph ran to the cashier to see if the store had a defibrillator for Spears’ heart. The store did not.

“Then he went straight purple,” Nulph said about Spears. “Dispatch asked if I knew CPR. I said, ‘no’ but I knew I had his head in the right position and so I started compressions, and I kept doing it until right before the paramedic came over and EMT got there.”

The distributing company the men work for called Shanna Lunday-Spears, telling her there had been a medical emergency with her husband, Wayne Spears. Paramedics said her husband was in cardiac arrest.

“I said, ‘no, no because that means dead,’” Lunday-Spears said. The paramedic nodded, telling her they needed to get to the hospital fast.

Spears also had an anoxic brain injury due to a lack of oxygen. He wasn’t expected to survive and had no brain activity for two days following the accident, Lunday-Spears said.

Then he woke up. 

Calling him a “miracle man,” Lunday-Spears said her husband told her he saw everything.

“Wayne this whole time was so sure he arrived at the hospital with me, riding in my passenger’s seat with me and sprinting into the hospital,” she said. “He remembers seeing a guy, knowing he was important, but he couldn’t see his face. Wayne remembers seeing paramedics do compressions on him. He saw them use the defibrillator on him. He saw all the resuscitation efforts.”

Lunday-Spears said on her birthday in the emergency room, Spears told her he was standing next to her.

“I didn’t argue with him,” she said, recounting her husband’s out-of-body experience. “According to him, he was with me the whole time and what he witnessed done to him is what I saw done to him.”

Spears told his wife, sister-in-law, friends, family — anyone who visited — his story over and over again, detail by detail.

“He said he remembers standing behind me doing CPR, and he kept wondering who I was performing on,” Nulph said.

Robbery

It’s not the first time Nulph has been there to help.

A would-be robber was taken into custody after Nulph detained him at an area convenience store in October 2014.

Nulph was making deliveries to that store when the clerk, Kristi Schiemann, ran into the freezer and said a teenager was attempting the rob the store. Nulph left the freezer as the juvenile was attempting to leave and grabbed the juvenile and took him to the ground.

He grabbed the 14-year-old and took him to the ground, holding him there until police arrived.

“I grabbed him and slammed him to the ground,” he said. “He had a stick as his weapon. It was wrapped up to make it look like a gun.”

Nulph said he talked to the teen before police arrived and asked him why he was robbing the store.

“He said, ‘I guess I’m just stupid,’” Nulph said. “I said, ‘Why aren’t you in school?’ He said he was expelled.”

Nulph was later honored by the Enid Police Department for his actions.

Nulph’s most recent action has rallied others in Enid to follow in his footsteps and help the Spears family.

“We don’t know why it happened,” Lunday-Spears said. “We can’t explain any of it at all. None of this is supposed to be possible.”

She said her family is lucky Nulph is a man of action.

“I can’t just sit back and watch,” Nulph said. “Him — being a coworker and friend — I will go and help. My mindset is to help when help is needed.”

Summars writes for the Enid, Oklahoma News & Eagle.