On July 9, a tragic and heroic series of events tied four people in a quiet East Lyme neighborhood together irrevocably.

Carlos Salazar was out for a one-mile run just minutes from his family home when he suffered a massive heart attack, collapsed onto the hot pavement and, momentarily, died.

Jen Genta was driving home with her three young daughters when she saw something in the road. She pulled over and realized that it was a man lying face-down. He wasn't moving and his face was blue. He had no pulse.

Mark Gleeson was working in his home when he heard a blood-curdling scream that sent chills down his spine. He grabbed his phone and ran.

Christal Cupp was across the street cleaning out her garage when she heard a woman calling desperately for help. She bolted outside.

Three neighbors, most of whom had never met, rushed to Salazar's side. They applied compressions to his chest until they heard his ribs crack. They breathed air into his lungs, not giving a second thought to the risks of contact with a stranger during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They saved his life.

Around the corner, on Alexander Drive, Elise Salazar was in her home when she heard a car horn honk. Then she heard her doorbell, then a loud knock. She answered the door and a woman she didn't recognize asked, "Do you have a husband who's out for a run?"

"Yes," she replied.

"He's collapsed," Cupp told her, guiding her quickly out the door and to Jeremy Drive, where police cars and ambulances had flooded the street. Amid the chaos and flashing lights, Elise Salazar could see her husband lying motionless on the ground.

'An incredible father'

A father of six, married to his wife for 29 years, Salazar collapsed from a heart attack often dubbed "the widowmaker" — there was a 98% blockage of his left anterior descending artery. His chances of survival were slim to none, his doctors told his wife.

Salazar, a healthy, active 53-year-old who teaches at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, had never had heart issues before. But on July 9, his artery was almost completely blocked, cutting off a significant supply of blood that keeps the heart pumping.

He was taken by ambulance to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, where doctors put a stent in his artery. Six days later, he was home with his family, recovering well.

"We can't thank everyone in the community enough," Elise Salazar said. "They not only saved one life, but my six children's lives and hundreds of lives, so many people would have been affected by his loss."

The couple, who are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary next year, met in Utah and raised their family in Colorado. They moved to East Lyme two years ago for Salazar's job teaching electrical and cyber sciences at Coast Guard Academy. Their six children — Jacquie, 27, Andy, 26, Katie, 24, Nate, 22, Trevor, 19 and Christie, 13 — are dispersed in states throughout the country.

"My children would have lost an incredible father," Elise Salazar said.

A scream for help

For the neighbors who saved Salazar's life, the actions deemed heroic by the Salazar family and his doctors were quite simply the right thing to do, they said.

"I would hope anyone would have done what we did," Genta said.

Salazar was lucky that Genta was the one who spotted him first, his doctors told him. She's a nurse practitioner and knew exactly what to do to help Salazar's heart and recognize that he'd likely suffered a heart attack.

On any given day, Genta said, she would have been driving down Jeremy Drive 10 minutes later. But on July 9, she left early to relieve her babysitter. She was driving down the street with her three daughters, Emma, 9, Livvy, 7, and Mila, 4, in the car when she spotted Salazar and immediately sprang into action.

Genta said that from her training as a nurse practitioner, she knew it was most important to focus on compressions on Salazar's chest. She pressed deep and hard onto his chest until his ribs cracked and some color came back into his face.

"When I saw his face go from blue to pink, I at least knew something was working," she said. "There was maybe a chance."

Her daughters, though terrified, helped direct traffic by waving their arms out the windows to stop passing cars.

Her oldest, Emma, tried to dial 911 but couldn't unlock her mom's phone. When Genta realized her daughter couldn't call for help, she called out herself, shouting "help" into the void of the quiet, empty street.

"I'll never forget that scream," said Mark Gleeson, 30, a new dad to 4-month-old Cillian who lives on Jeremy Drive with his wife, Meghan. The two met in Ireland, where Mark is from, and moved to East Lyme, where Meghan is from, two years ago. They hadn't met many of their neighbors before that day.

They said the neighborhood is normally quiet and calm. The sound of Genta's scream rippled through it, Gleeson said.

"Even now, I can hear it and get chills thinking of it, it was like something out of a film," he said last week, standing in his yard looking toward the spot where Salazar collapsed. "It was a scream that I've never heard before, and it was somebody screaming 'help me.'"

Delivering the news

Gleeson, who has been working from home due to COVID-19, was sitting at his desk when he heard the unforgettable scream. He ran outside and straight to Genta's side. He called 911, reporting that a man had collapsed and wasn't breathing. Then he jumped in to help administer CPR.

"We kept alternating to try and maintain our stamina to give it as good as we could for as long as we could," said Gleeson, who said they were giving CPR for five to seven minutes.

As Gleeson called 911, Genta was helped by 64-year-old neighbor Christal Cupp, who was cleaning out her garage and working on a list of chores when she heard the call for help. Cupp, who recently retired from a long career with UPS, rushed outside to help. She breathed air into Salazar's lungs as Genta tried to restart his heart.

At no point, said the heroic trio, did the threat of COVID-19 cross their minds. They put their hands and mouths on a stranger without a second thought.

"It didn't matter what he had, even if this was COVID and that's why he collapsed, we just needed to save his life," Genta said.

When Gleeson took over aiding Genta with CPR, Cupp was given a daunting, difficult task. Find the home of the man who had collapsed and alert his family.

Genta, who had met Elise and Christie Salazar briefly at the pool a week before, had a vague idea of where the family lived.

Cupp set out to knock on doors  — a familiar task, given her career — and soon found herself face to face with a woman to whom she had to deliver heartbreaking news.

When Elise Salazar opened her door, 13-year-old Christie nearby, she learned that her husband was unconscious in the road. She grabbed her phone, told her daughter she'd be back, and followed a stranger to a spot around the corner that would remain in her memory forever.

Held back by first responders, Elise Salazar watched helplessly as they lifted her lifeless husband into an ambulance.

Cupp took Elise Salazar to the hospital, where she anxiously awaited news about her husband's condition. Days passed before he opened his eyes. Days during which a wife and six children wondered whether the man they loved was still there.

Didn't think he'd survive

Elise Salazar, worried sick about her husband and trying to keep in touch with their worried children, also made sure to keep her husband's rescuers informed. She sent them texts throughout the day, letting them know how he was doing.

"We didn't know whether he was alive or dead or what, we were just kind of in limbo waiting to hear," Gleeson said. The text messages calmed their nerves and knitted them closer together as they awaited the news.

Genta said that after doing CPR for so long, she was shocked to receive a message from Elise Salazar saying her husband was going to survive.

"When he left I was like, 'He's not going to make it, there's no way,'" Genta said.

Despite a loss of memory from the night before his heart attack through the day he awoke in the hospital, Salazar suffered no other memory loss or brain damage. The blockage in his heart was cleared and he was fit to go home to his family much more quickly than expected.

When he was released from the hospital days later, his wife asked if he wanted to see the spot where he collapsed. The spot where he died. The spot where he was saved.

As they wound their way down Jeremy Drive, they spotted Genta. The Salazars stopped and Carlos met the woman who had saved his life.

"It was like seeing a ghost," Genta said.

In the days since, the Salazars have visited their heroes and gotten to know their families. In their eyes, they're now a part of their own big family. 

On July 21, they all stood on Jeremy Drive, inches from the spot where Salazar had laid lifeless. Their children ran around and played as the group recalled the day's events, piecing together what happened and how a life was saved. They gathered for a group photo and talked about how glad they are to know their neighbors; they planned for future get-togethers and trips to the community pool. And one by one, Salazar wrapped his heroes in his arms, thanking them for saving his life.

t.hartz@theday.com