Man reunites with off-duty Austin firefighter who saved his life

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Dom Fusco hopes to inspire others to take a CPR class after his near-death experience last summer.

In August 2023, the 24 year old and his friends were timing out their fastest mile on the track at Austin High School when things suddenly changed. Fusco collapsed on the track.

"You were mumbling, you were talking to us. But it wasn't super coherent. And then we lost you. And we couldn't get any response from you," Gus Manke, Fusco's friend, recounted about that Saturday morning that changed their lives.

"I was telling my friend Harry I don't need an ambulance — I'm fine, I'm good," Fusco said about that early summer morning. "Good thing they didn't listen to me because I went down again, and this time, the seizures started, and I was foaming at the mouth. My friend told me that he touched my arm, and it was cold. And I was completely flatlined dead for two-and-a-half minutes."

Thankfully, Manke kept up with his CPR training skills since 2019 and used those for the first time when Fusco's life was in his hands. He had two choices and needed to take action within seconds.

"There's a huge amount of guilt knowing you can help someone, and then you don't follow through on it. And for me in that moment I knew I had a job to do," Manke said.

"By the grace of God, my friend Gus was there who's trained in CPR, and there just happened to be a firefighter that was on the track that day," Fusco said, as he recalled what his friends told him about that day.

That firefighter, Ben Liner, was spending his day off with his son at the same track. His son's Boy Scout group was in the middle of a physical fitness test when he noticed Fusco lying on the track. Liner rushed over to help Manke give CPR to Fusco.

"He's such a pivotal part of the story, the fact that he was there that day," Fusco said.

The moment was a bit chaotic, and Fusco's friends did not get Liner's contact information.

"It's just so strange to me: I think about it every day, and I just want to meet him and shake his hand and say thank you," Fusco said. "Because, again, if it wasn't for Gus, if it wasn't for the firefighter, like I wouldn't — I wouldn't be here to talk about this today."

After hearing about the mystery hero, KXAN contacted the Austin Fire Department for guidance because the only details available consisted of the day, time and location — and not the firefighter's name. Thankfully it was enough information for the department, and within a couple of days, AFD found the hero. It turned out Liner even received a special recognition earlier this year for his life-saving actions.

A couple of weeks after the initial interview with Fusco, he got to reunite Tuesday with Liner at an Austin-Travis County EMS station — almost 10 months since Fusco's cardiac arrest.

"I wouldn't be here without you," Fusco told Liner, as he extended his hand to thank the man who saved his life. "I didn't know if you were real."

"I'm glad I was there," Liner responded.

"I thought about you every single day," Fusco said.

Even with Liner's 20 years working as a firefighter, a day like this is rare.

"You don't often get to meet or have an opportunity to meet somebody you did CPR on, even when they survive. When I was told about the opportunity I said, of course," Liner said.

Fusco had new faces to see on this special reunion, including Chris Garrett, Marco Villaseñor and Val Arocha-Guerra — the team that helped take Fusco from the track to the hospital. The meeting was a first for these Austin-Travis County EMS paramedics.

"We were actually getting fuel that day, as we were nearing the end of our shift," Garrett, a medic with Austin-Travis County EMS, said. "The call come up on our screen, and they were giving it to a different truck that was a little bit further away, and we're like, 'No, we can take it. We're closer.'"

"I think the most rewarding part about this job is the ability to help people," Villaseñor, a commander with ATCEMS, said. "Dominic's survival story is great. He was pretty lucky to have somebody there that was nearby that knew CPR, that knew how to recognize a cardiac arrest."

"I was telling Dom that it's really cool to see him. Most of the time, the extent of what we do get is on a computer or an email saying they walked into the hospital, but we never see them, talk to them or know what their life is after that," Arocha-Guerra, a clinical specialist with ATCEMS, said.

Fusco moved to Austin from Philadelphia six weeks before his cardiac arrest, and Manke, the man who first performed CPR on him, met Fusco for the first time on that August summer morning.

Fusco's mother took a flight to Austin that same day after getting the news by phone from one of her son's friends. She also has a message for the men and women who saved her son.

"My mom just called me on the way here like just in tears saying just tell him thank you," Fusco said. "I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude, just overwhelmed with gratitude."

Fusco now lives with a defibrillator in his body, but he didn't say yes to the device right away — not until he got a call from a friend who didn't know what happened. That friend shared a story with Fusco about a soccer player who collapsed in the middle of a game but was brought back to life thanks to the defibrillator. That sold Dom on the idea to say yes.

Fusco, Liner and the rest of the first responders hope this story will encourage people to get their CPR certification. The City of Austin and the American Heart Association offer those courses.

Fusco still doesn't know what caused his cardiac arrest. He said there is no history of heart disease in his family. However, the former college football player is back to running, and he and his mother recently ran a couple of races together.

Exactly six months after his cardiac arrest, he went to Tanzania to raise money for his friend's charity, and that included a climb all the way to Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Fusco's mother actually went with him during this fundraising trip to help send Tanzanian children to school. He got the inspiration while he was in the hospital.

"Three days after this happened, I couldn't go to sleep. And I hear this voice telling me like, you need to go to Tanzania. And I was like, what? It was God speaking to me," Fusco recalled. "I've had this idea to do this thing called Climb for Kids. You get a group together, raise money and go climb Mount Kilimanjaro. All the proceeds in the profits will go to sending kids to school, and it gives them an opportunity to get a better and better education and hope for a better future."

"I know that I've been given this story as an opportunity to go and share the goodness of God and talk about resilience. That's a word that keeps resurfacing for me," Fusco added. "We're going to be knocked down in life. We're gonna have these hard times, but they're not happening to us — they're happening for us for a reason."