A Richmond resident was not only given the best husband award, but also awarded the Vital Link Award for saving his wife's life two years ago.
For his life-saving actions in performing CPR on his wife, Nick Rizzo was presented the Vital Link Award on May 30 at the Richmond BC Ambulance station on Williams and No. 1 roads.
Vital Link awards honour the skillful actions of one or more bystanders at a cardiac arrest emergency, explained Sarah Paget, advanced care paramedic with BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS).
The award is nominated by BCEHS staff and presented to citizens throughout the province.
On July 2, 2023, Nick's wife Angela Rizzo was resting upstairs in her Richmond home, after having dialysis, when she began to feel unwell and called her husband upstairs.
While they were talking, Angela became unresponsive, Nick explained.
"I can't remember what I said, but she didn't reply, and when I asked her again, she again didn't reply ... and just kind of froze there," he said.
"That was scary, because it looked like she wasn't breathing."
Nick then called 911 and was guided by a BCEHS medical call taker to move his wife to the floor and began performing CPR until paramedics arrived two minutes later.
Angela was "gone for a few minutes" and was brought back by paramedics.
She described her husband as a hero and is thankful for the paramedics and medical professionals in the past two years of her recovery.
"He's always been my hero," she said.
"Had he not been there, I would have just gone to sleep and never woken up."
However, her husband disagrees.
"I don't think I'm a hero. I think I was lucky that I was there and I'm glad I was there, because if I wasn't at that moment, if she hadn't called me to go upstairs ... she could have just drifted off and gone," said Nick.
While Nick never had prior CPR experience, he said this experience has him planning to take a CPR course.
"After that (incident), ... I really encourage anyone to learn and I'm going to do it myself."
While Angela is on the road to recovery, she describes herself as a person having "more tin than the tin man in her."
She currently has a mechanical valve, a defibrillator and a pacemaker and is currently on dialysis, while on a kidney transplant waitlist.
"If I'm really lucky, I'll find a donor and get a kidney, and then my old life will be almost back to normal before everything happened," said Angela.
"I have my family, so that's all that matters now."
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