Emergency room doctor Shane Naidoo was nearing the halfway mark of the New Jersey Half Marathon at Newport on Sept. 28 when a woman running in front of him collapsed on the greenway in Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
Naidoo, 34, rushed over with four other runners to help and immediately realized the situation was serious. The woman, Chrystal Rinehold, 36, was struggling to breathe and could barely speak.
“I think I’m dying,” Naidoo recalled her whispering as he checked her pulse.
Rinehold, an avid runner with three years of marathon experience, is a girls’ high school basketball coach. Naidoo, an emergency room doctor at JFK University Medical Center in Edison, N.J., suspected she might be dehydrated or have low blood sugar.
“Runners can collapse and die from these things,” he said. “She told me that her chest hurt, and I saw that she had an altered mental status. I knew that she could quickly be in cardiac arrest.”
Naidoo told the other runners who had stopped that he was a doctor, then he gave them instructions.
“I propped Chrystal up and supported her head, then I asked one person to call 911 and get an ambulance, another person to get a police officer to secure the scene, and another person to get to a medic tent and let them know [what happened],” he said. “The fourth person stayed with me to help.”
Naidoo said he then squeezed glucose beneath Rinehold’s tongue from a gel pack he was carrying in his pocket.
“I had to do it very gradually because I was afraid she would vomit and aspirate,” he said. “Her pulse was fluctuating.”
Over and over he said to her: “Stay with me.”
As the minutes ticked by, Rinehold’s partner, Walli McMillan, was at the finish line, where he was waiting with a bouquet of flowers and their children, Maximus, 6, and Nova, 8 months.
Naidoo said he noticed a message from McMillan on Rinehold’s Apple watch: “Are you, okay, babe?”
“I asked one of the volunteers to get him on the phone, and I told him, ‘Walli, I have Chrystal here. She’s having a difficult time in this race, but I need your voice and your compassion to support her right now,’” Naidoo said.
“I told him that she might not be able to hear him, but he should speak confidently and tell her that he loved her,’” he added.
While McMillan was talking, a police officer showed up with emergency oxygen for Rinehold, then paramedics arrived, Naidoo said, noting that it took the ambulance crew about 25 minutes to get there because of marathon roadblocks.
While McMillan made his way to Jersey City Medical Center, Naidoo rode in the ambulance with Rinehold, relieved that her vital signs were improving.
At the hospital, which was about a half mile from where Rinehold collapsed, Naidoo said he gave the emergency room crew a rundown of what happened, then he stuck around to help care for Rinehold until after McMillan arrived. NJ.com was among the local news outlets to report on his efforts.
“Walli came around the corner pushing a stroller, and suddenly Max ran out from behind him and gave me a big hug,” Naidoo recalled. “That was really touching.”
Naidoo said that it was remarkable he even crossed paths with Rinehold that day as she fell to the ground.
He’d registered for the half marathon two months ago, but then made plans to go camping with friends in North Carolina on the same weekend. When Hurricane Helene hit, he decided to run the race in Jersey City instead.
‘I WASN’T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE THERE’
“So I wasn’t even supposed to be there,” he said. “Because I hadn’t been training, I thought I’d take it easy and just have a great time.”
As he approached the 7th mile, Naidoo said he did something he’d never done before at a marathon: He stopped to use the restroom.
“As a result, when I reentered the race, I was about 30 feet behind Chrystal,” he said. “If one thing had been different in that list of events, I wouldn’t have been there to help her.”
When Naidoo left the hospital, he said he continued to text Rinehold to make sure everything was going well as her condition improved.
Rinehold, who coaches basketball at Elizabeth High School in Elizabeth, N.J., said she was humbled by the ER doctor’s concern and dedication.
“By the grace of God, Shane was right behind me,” she said. “I don’t remember much [from that day], but I do remember Shane and his energy and compassion.”
She said she started feeling dizzy halfway through the race before experiencing chest pain.
“After I collapsed, I had the whole experience of seeing my life flash before my eyes,” Rinehold said.
“My chest was getting tighter, I couldn’t breathe, and it felt like my body was shutting off,” she said. “I told myself, ‘Chrystal, if you have to find some air in the pit of your stomach, just find it.’ I was fighting for my life.”
Naidoo and other doctors concluded she’d become severely dehydrated, she said.
‘HUMBLING LESSON TO LEARN’
“It was a humbling lesson to learn,” Rinehold said. “The hydration level in my body did not match the level I was training at. The exertion and dehydration almost caused a heart attack.”
Rinehold was released from the hospital after three days. Before she went home, she said she logged on to the half marathon’s website and was shocked to see Naidoo’s name almost in last place. He’d returned to finish the race and had come in 4,059th place with a time of three hours and 53 minutes.
Naidoo said when he left the hospital that day, he noticed that part of the street was still cordoned off for the half marathon.
“I thought, ‘Even though the race is done, maybe I could just run it by myself and finish,’” he said. “I texted some friends, and they went to wait for me at the finish line.”
As he ran, he said a volunteer in a bright yellow vest asked him, ‘Are you the last runner?’”
“I told her, ‘Yes, I think I am,’” Naidoo said, though final results showed there were a few people behind him. “She then had someone on a bicycle escort me to the finish line. So basically, I sprinted to keep up with him to the end.’”
At the end of the 21-km course, Naidoo said he apologized to everyone and thanked them for working late to accommodate his finish. When an official presented him with a race completion medal, he immediately had an idea.
“I thought, ‘This medal isn’t just mine,’” Naidoo said. “I knew it would mean a lot to Chrystal and her family. For her race to end like that, I didn’t want it to be a discouraging moment for her.”
He said when he got home, he fetched some tools from his garage and cut the medal in half. Then he texted Rinehold and arranged to meet her after a doctor’s appointment she had on Oct. 3.
“When I gave her half of the medal, I felt a lot of gratitude – it was like a reconnection in a way,” he said.
Rinehold called the moment beautiful, and said she plans to keep in touch with Naidoo for the rest of her life.
“I’m forever indebted to him,” she said. “I want the entire world to know there’s an angel living among us, and his name is Dr. Shane Naidoo.”