In June 2025, Catherine McReynolds was driving through Berkshire taking her 20-year-old son Sebastien to residential college, a trip they make together frequently. They had stopped for a night in a hotel in Bracknell to break up the driving and were starting the second leg of their journey when the day took an unexpected turn.
Catherine, who had no prior symptoms or diagnoses, had a sudden cardiac arrest at the wheel. In charge of a vehicle during busy morning commuter traffic, she was now unconscious. In a nightmarish scenario, her car crossed to the other side of the road and began to veer into oncoming traffic. Sebastien, who has moderate learning difficulties, couldn’t understand what was happening. He screamed for his mum to wake up, but she could not.
Meanwhile Kayleigh, who lives in Bracknell, was on her way to work at a charity that provides residential care for young children. Kayleigh, who had undergone CPR training at work just a few weeks earlier, saw Catherine’s car on the other side of the road, facing the opposite direction. Catherine was slumped at the wheel. Kayleigh bravely put her car on the central reservation and went over to see what was wrong.
She immediately knew Catherine was in a critical condition. “I’d seen that look before”, Kayleigh recalls, “It was the look of someone who has not got long left. The sounds she was making sounded like breathing, but I knew she wasn’t taking real breaths. I realised I had to get her out of that car as quickly as possible.”
Putting training into action
Not only had Kayleigh recently been trained in CPR, but her charity work and the fact her daughter has a complex cardiac condition made her uniquely placed to care for both Catherine and her son in that moment. She immediately recognised not only that Sebastien had difficulty communicating, but that his mother urgently needed chest compressions.
As she started to put her training into action, Kayleigh put all thoughts of herself aside. “It wasn’t how I’d expected my morning to go”, Kayleigh remembers, “But I just kept telling myself: ‘this isn’t about you’. I concentrated on giving Catherine chest compressions and counting out loud. My adrenaline kicked in. It felt like forever, but it was probably only five minutes.” At that stage, another bystander took over the chest compressions, as it is difficult to continue high quality CPR for more than a few minutes at a time.
If something doesn’t look right, you have to use your initiative and help, you could save someone’s life.
There were lots of people watching on by this point, but there were also plenty of people driving past, with some even beeping their horns in the rush-hour traffic. Kayleigh remembers feeling angry on Catherine’s behalf. “I couldn’t believe people would just drive past”, she reflects, “A cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, at any time. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t helped Catherine that day. If something doesn’t look right, you have to use your initiative and help, you could save someone’s life. If I was in this situation again, I would 100 per cent stop to help.”
When Catherine was taken away in an ambulance, Kayleigh phoned her partner. “I was in floods of tears, trying to process what had just happened” she remembers, “Performing CPR in real life is completely different to a training scenario. I just hoped I had done enough.”
A bond for life
Catherine doesn’t remember any of that day. But she knows it was touch and go for her. Catherine’s husband, Jonathan, made sure he kept Kayleigh updated on her progress. Kayleigh remembers: “He called me and warned me that the hospital team wasn’t sure Catherine would make it. Then, after a few days in the Intensive Care Unit, he said, ‘you won’t believe it, she’s sitting up’. It was an amazing feeling.”
Kayleigh is still in touch with Catherine and Jonathan. Kayleigh describes it as “a bond for life that you never expected.”
“It’s a strange feeling” Catherine explains, “You think: ‘I don’t even know this person, but they saved my life’. That’s something our family will never forget.”
Catherine is recovering well, despite suffering from some fatigue. After her cardiac arrest, she had an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator fitted, which can be uncomfortable, and she’s still learning not to push herself too hard. Her cardiac arrest was diagnosed as idiopathic, which means there are no underlying causes. “It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that your life can change out of the blue,” Catherine explains, “But something that has really motivated me and my family is raising awareness of the importance of CPR. Cardiac arrest is fatal within minutes unless CPR is given, and fewer than one in ten people in the UK survive a cardiac arrest out of hospital.”
If Kayleigh and the other bystanders hadn’t stopped to help me that day, I would not be here today.
Doctor Suzy Stokes, who was part of the Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew on scene that day, explains the difference Kayleigh and the other bystanders made: “When someone is in cardiac arrest, every minute matters. That day, we brought hospital-level care directly to Catherine’s side, taking control of her breathing to maintain oxygen to her brain and vital organs and giving her the medicine she so desperately needed.
“Early bystander CPR puts us in the best possible position to save a life and the CPR Catherine received is undoubtedly the reason she is doing so well today. But sadly, we know a third of our community would not feel confident performing CPR if they witnessed someone in cardiac arrest. We want to change this.”
“I’m not sure that I’ve really dealt with what happened to me yet” Catherine admits, “But I’m making it my mission to raise awareness amongst other people, so that I might just help a family like mine in the future. A lot of people don’t know the difference between a cardiac arrest and a heart attack. My heart is healthy, but its electrical system malfunctioned. If Kayleigh and the other bystanders hadn’t stopped to help me that day, I would not be here today. Thanks to them, the Thames Valley Air Ambulance crew were able to give me the best chance of survival.”
