Nurse noticed an unwell woman's smile wasn’t right at 30,000 feet in the air. She ordered the pilot to make an emergency landing
At 30,000 feet, most people are thinking about snacks, their destination, or the movie playing on the tiny screen in front of them. But somewhere above Kansas, on an ordinary flight, something went wrong. LPN Mary Swain, known back home in the halls of Community Hospital South as “Rambo” for her grit in the Indianapolis ER, wasn’t supposed to be saving lives that day, per 13 WTHR.
She was off the clock, but fate indeed calls for the right person at the right time. On the same flight, Sophie Sarbach and her daughter, Anastasia, were returning home to Washington state after a trip to Carmel. But things changed unexpectedly. “I got up, I took two steps and my vision went very blurry. I lost my balance,” she later recalled. Anastasia watched her mother wobble, something in her expression was off, too. “I looked at her and I said, ‘Smile at me.’ And she smiled and her smile was asymmetrical,” she said. It was the kind of moment no family wants to face mid-air. “So I said to the flight attendant, ‘My mom’s having a stroke.’”
Mary heard the pilot’s call for medical help and instinct took over. “So that's when I knew I needed to take control of the situation,” she said. Anastasia remembers, “She just threw back that curtain and she marched up the aisle, and she took charge.” Sophie remembers it too, calling Mary her “guardian angel and savior.” What happened next was swift. Mary leaned on a trick she says every family should know: B.E.F.A.S.T. - Balance, Eyes, Face, Arms, Speech, Time. The acronym is simple, but it saves lives. She checked each sign quickly, confirming Anastasia’s fear of stroke.
Beyond their story lies a wider reality. According to research by Diji Kuriakose and Zhicheng Xiao, published in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central in October 2020, stroke affects roughly 13.7 million people worldwide annually. It is a neurological disorder that happens due to blocked blood vessels. Clots interrupt blood flow and clog arteries and vessels can rupture, leading to bleeding in the brain, resulting in a clot. When oxygen is cut off, brain cells die within minutes. Time is everything when it comes to tackling stroke.
Mary knew this. When the pilot proposed diverting to a smaller Kansas airport, she refused and said, “No! She has to get to a big hospital. She has to get to someplace where they can handle this,” Anastasia recalled her saying. Thanks to that insistence, the plane touched down in Denver, a place suitable for what Sophie needed. Three blood clots were removed and her life was put back on track. Sophie recovered amazingly well, spending a short time in rehab and returning home in just 17 days, that too on her own feet.
Now, with gratitude settling in like a second chance, Sophie and her family are sharing their story so others recognize the signs they almost missed in the sky. “I'm so grateful she was on the same plane,” Sophie said, “and that her expertise and caring saved my life.”