TP_071218

44 | July 12, 2018 | The tinley junction sports
tinleyjunction.com
Eight months after heart attack, Mahoney
JEFF VORVA, Sports Editor
Tinley Park’s Tom “Doc”
Mahoney finished 445th out
of 620 runners at the Stars
and Stripes 5K race on July 4.
He covered the McCarthy
Park course in 39 minutes,
18.7 seconds. That was more
than 12 minutes behind race
winner Mitch Gilbert.
Mahoney’s statistics were
far from remarkable.
The fact that he finished
the race was remarkable.
Heck, the fact that he
started the race was pretty
darn noteworthy, too.
Mahoney, 68, suffered a
heart attack during Tinley
Park’s Turkey Trot on Nov.
5. At the time, the man who
has a garage wall full of bibs
from previous races during
his career and had carried
the American flag in 11
previous Stars and Stripes
event, was fighting for his
life. Who knew if he would
live or run again?
Well, he lived. He soon
got back to practice running
and The Stars and Stripes
race was his first race back
since the Turkey Trot.
Finishing 445th on a humid,
90-plus degree day was
a pretty proud moment for
him.
“Just finishing is an accomplishment,”
he said minutes
after the race. “Gone are
the 24-minute days. But you
hit that turn there and you
see the finish line and it was
pretty…it was emotional. It
was pretty cool.”
Running alongside of Mahoney
during the closing
minutes of his race was his
girlfriend, Julie Carlson.
Full cardiac arrest
Back in November, Mahoney
was running alongside
of Carlson as she finished
the Turkey Trot. Mahoney
said he felt chest pains in
the first quarter mile of the
Turkey Trot at Vogt Woods.
So he pulled out of the race
at that point, thinking is was
probably indigestion.
He chatted with other runners,
felt some more pain
and it subsided. He waited
for Carlson to finish and trotted
alongside her, and then
he felt more pain.
“When I finished the race,
he had his arm on my shoulder
and he said he was having
chest pains and I said
‘let’s get to the car,’” Carlson
said.
Once in the car, a new set
of hurdles awaited.
“We were on our way and
he was in full cardiac arrest,”
she said. “He was getting
clammy and had all the signs
of things not being right. We
headed for Palos Hospital.
The biggest challenge is that
we were coming out of the
parking lot and the road was
blocked because of the finish
line. The race wasn’t over.
“I had to turn right in traffic
with my windows down
and let people who were still
running in the race know
we had an emergency. We
were finagling our way
through the runners and being
safe and once we got to
167th and Ridgeland, it was
smooth sailing. It was 9 a.m.
on a Sunday and fortunately
there was no traffic. That
was in our favor.”
Once in the hospital, she
said eight or nine people
were working on him.
One artery had 98 or 99
percent blockage, depending
on if you are asking Mahoney
or Carlson. But both
agreed the other artery was
75 percent blocked.
After having three stents
inserted into his heart, he
was ready to get out of the
hospital and passed a stress
test and left after spending
just one night in Palos
Heights.
“Staying just one night?
That just doesn’t happen,”
Carlson said. “But it happened
with Tom.”
No joking around
Mahoney credits Carlson
for saving his life but she
said that’s not the case.
He said she was calm during
the drive to the hospital.
“I work in the medical field
even though I’m not clinical,”
she said. “I’ve worked
in the field for 25 years so I
guess I reacted to the situation
as best as I guess you
could. I knew what we had
to do. My main concern was
making sure we got him to
the hospital without any major
obstacles. Without losing
consciousness. Without getting
stopped for speeding.”
She tried to make a few
jokes to Mahoney, but he
wasn’t in a joking mood.
“I was literally meditating
and trying to relax and calm
my body down,” he said.
“She asked what I was doing
and I said ‘leave me alone,
I’m meditating.’”
He said he was lucky for
several reasons but the luckiest
break was that the attack
didn’t happen several hours
before, when he was driving
home in the rain from Michigan,
where his son, Patrick,
was bowling for Michigan
State in the Adrian College
Open intercollegiate tournament.
“If it happened then, I
would have ended up in a
ditch and they would have
found me dead,” he said.
“The fact that I came home,
went to sleep and got up
the next day and got into a
race and it happened when
I was a quarter mile into the
race…that’s where I feel I
was lucky. There were a lot
of people around, especially
Julie.”
Mahoney picked up his
Tinley Park’s Tom “Doc” Mahoney and his girlfriend, Julie Carlson, pose after the
Tinley Park Stars and Stripes Race at McCarthy Park. The last time the two raced was in
November, when Mahoney suffered a heart attack and Carlson raced him to a hospital.
JEFF VORVA/22ND CENTURY MEDIA.
Tom “Doc” Mahoney will be able to hang a few more bibs on his garage wall after
recovering from a November heart attack and competing in the Tinley Park Stars and
Stripes 5K race on July 4. PHOTO SUBMITTED