'Mystery nurse' who helped save woman's life at Scottsdale restaurant steps forward

When Sandy Kohler and her husband visited Arizona a couple of weeks ago, they never imagined a nice dinner outing would turn into a chaotic situation in which Sandy would help save someone's life.

They were primarily concerned with getting a table.

The Kohlers, self-described "part-time snowbirds" who live in Pennsylvania, were waiting to be seated with friends at Sumo Maya, a Scottsdale restaurant, two Saturdays ago. There was only one problem: The reservations the group thought it had made on OpenTable.com had not gone through.

"We were kind of walking around taking a look at the place, then we were going to go (somewhere else)," Kohler said. "We were just ready to walk out the door of the restaurant. ... It was my husband who said, 'Hey, Sandy, somebody might need your help.'"

Kohler, who works as a recovery-room nurse at Grand View Hospital outside Philadelphia, looked at a nearby table. There, a group of people was laying an older, seemingly unresponsive woman on the floor beside her chair. Sandy approached the diners, told them she was a nurse and asked if they needed her help.

"I went up and, in my assessment, it appeared that she wasn't breathing. She was pretty grayish and pretty clammy," Kohler remembered.

Mystery nurse: She did CPR at a restaurant, helped save a life, left without getting a table

She opened the woman's airway and asked someone to call for help. After checking for a pulse, she and a man at the table began performing CPR.

"Fortunately, by the second rounds of compressions and ventilations, she started to come around," Kohler said. By the time paramedics showed up, the woman had even started making eye contact with her.

Both families would later describe the situation as "chaotic." The woman's grandson approached Kohler just before the family rushed off to the hospital.

"He asked me my name, I said 'Sandy' and he gave me a great big hug," she said. "I didn't even really get his name, and I felt like they had better things to worry about than me."

Unable to get a table at Sumo Maya, the Kohlers went next door to Vivo Ristorante, had dinner with their friends and went home. A few days later, they would return home to Pennsylvania and share their unusual story with a few friends.

"Believe me, I thought of (the woman) all that evening," Kohler said. "I was like, gee, I know she was starting to come around after I left. I should have done this. I should have asked for an AED. You're kind of second-guessing yourself."

She was not the only one who could not stop thinking about the encounter. Days later, the D'Appollonio family of Phoenix wrote an open letter to The Arizona Republic expressing thanks to the "Angel Nurse" who had appeared — then disappeared — at Sumo Maya on Dec. 5. In a follow-up story, the family said they regretted not knowing at least the name of the good Samaritan who had helped save their mother's life. (They had mistakenly thought the nurse's name was "Cheryl," said Al D'Appollonio. It was his mother-in-law, Irene DeSantis, who suffered the medical emergency.) 

About a week later, a couple of the Kohlers' friends in Pennsylvania came across The Republic's story, which also ran in USA Today, and "put two and two together," said Rich Kohler.

Rich Kohler said his wife had spent much of the last week wondering what had happened to the woman she helped and was happy to hear she was doing OK. He added that their family was extremely proud of her, even though Sandy Kohler wanted to downplay the incident.

"It's not every day you bring someone back like that," he said.

The Kohler and D'Appollonio families have since gotten in touch, and Al D'Appollonio said his wife, who first reached out to the newspaper to try to identify the mystery nurse, is "much happier" now that she has been found. While the Kohlers don't live in Arizona, they said they frequently visit their son, a Phoenix police officer, and will likely be back in the Valley early next year. They hope to meet up, Sandy Kohler said.

Susie Timm, a spokeswoman for Sumo Maya, has said the restaurant would like to invite both families to dine there again when they are in town — and this time, the table will be guaranteed.