A deputy’s quick thinking helped save the life of a man experiencing a medical emergency

CHINO VALLEY, Ariz. (3TV/CBS 5/Gray News) -- A deputy in Arizona is being credited for saving the life of a man who was found lying in a rural area near Chino Valley last week.

Yavapai County Sheriff’s Deputy Tanner Ludwig was about to clock off and head home on the night of Dec. 21 when he was called out to a medical call along Perkinsville Road.

When Ludwig responded to the rural area, he learned that two hunters had found a man lying next to an ATV. Ludwig found the 45-year-old man injured but alert and conscious.

But as the ambulance arrived, the man’s condition took a turn for the worse. He was showing signs of suffering a stroke.

“His right pupil began to get large; he started clenching his fist,” Ludwig said. “While he was inside the ambulance, he started spitting out blood and started having shallow breathing.”

Ludwig said he knew that the man needed to be flown in order to receive the medical attention he needed in time, but the terrain wouldn’t be safe for a helicopter landing.

Using his quick thinking, he helped guide the ambulance to a safer spot to land. Ludwig said he used what he learned in the military about night flying to help set up emergency LED flares to prep a lit landing zone for medics to land.

“I, too, commend the quick action and forethought by the deputy to get medical help and to assist the medivac in landing,” Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes said in a statement. “The teamwork between deputies and medical personnel certainly saved this man’s life.”

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