In 'surreal' moment, former Omahan helps man with no pulse in emergency Eppley stop (2025)

This isn’t the first time Kate McGuire has stood up to help when there’s been a request for medical assistance while she was traveling.

Those situations were easily resolved — someone scared about flying and another dehydrated from drinking too much.

But last weekend, it was the real deal. When the call for help went out on her flight, McGuire, a nurse who was returning to Chicago from a wedding in Phoenix, reached the front of the plane to find an older man who didn’t have a pulse. There was no doctor on board.

“I took one look and he obviously wasn’t well,” McGuire said. “I asked what the closest airport was and if we were diverting.”

In a strange coincidence Saturday, Southwest Airlines Flight 1187 was directed to Eppley Airfield. McGuire, 37, who grew up in Omaha as Kate Reynolds, attended St. Margaret Mary School and Duchesne Academy before heading to Chicago to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees in nursing.

“When they said Omaha was the closest airport, I thought maybe this is a sign it will be OK,” she said. “When they said it, I just paused for a second. ‘We’re going to Omaha.’ It felt like some sort of divine intervention.”

With the help of another nurse and a medical student, McGuire inserted an IV line so she could give the man medication for his heart and did several exhausting minutes of chest compressions.

McGuire, who is nearly six months pregnant, didn’t even stop as the plane descended. One of the flight attendants braced himself against the cockpit door and kept a hand on her back to help keep her steady.

Flight attendants told her she could return to her seat for the landing, but she said no.

“I personally felt committed,” she said. “I said, ‘Just let me know when I have to hold on to something.’ All three of us said we were going to stay.”

They were met at Eppley by emergency personnel, who had been dispatched at 8:19 p.m. Omaha Fire Department medics used advanced life-support measures while taking the man to the Nebraska Medical Center.

In another coincidence, McGuire’s father, Mike Reynolds, had just landed in Omaha on another flight and was driving home when he saw the emergency personnel racing down Abbott Drive and wondered what was happening.

McGuire, meanwhile, washed up in an airport bathroom and gave a report before she rejoined husband Nick and daughter Frankie on their flight.

“The entire plane clapped for us, right after he was taken off and when we got back on board,” she said. Several people, including the flight crew, thanked her after the plane finally landed in Chicago.

McGuire, who had been watching the movie “Frozen” with Frankie when the first call for help went out, said she thought about what happened all the way home and still wonders if she did everything right.

It wasn’t like an emergency at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, where she works and would be surrounded by help. There wasn’t a doctor to make the big decisions or lots of handy equipment.

She said she just stepped in and did her best with the medical kit and AED machine provided by the crew members, who she said were wonderful. She received a travel voucher.

It still feels surreal several days later. She doesn’t think she’ll ever learn what happened to the ailing gentleman. But there was some beauty in everyone on the plane coming together to help a stranger.

“My biggest thought now is that I hope the man and his family have some sort of peace,” she said. “We don’t know the outcome, but I hope they know we did all we could with the resources we had to help their loved one.”