Game-Time Decision
It was a regular game until a player suddenly collapsed. This teen snapped into action.
Carmen Funderburk
Magnus Miller
At first, Magnus Miller was so focused on getting possession of the ball that he didn’t see the crisis unfolding behind him. Magnus, then 18, was a high school senior at Life Christian Academy in Choctaw, Oklahoma, and a point guard on the school’s basketball team. It was just a few minutes into a game in January 2025, and Randy Vitales, a player on the opposing team, had suddenly collapsed.
OU Health
Magnus Miller (right) used CPR on Randy Vitale (left) when Randy went into cardiac arrest.
“It was complete chaos,” recalls Magnus. Randy’s teammates, both teams’ coaches, and parents rushed over, all trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t long before Magnus began to understand the situation—and just how serious it was. Randy had symptoms of cardiac arrest: He had suddenly collapsed, had lost consciousness, and wasn’t breathing. “I ran over there and took control,” Magnus says.
Magnus instructed those huddled around Randy to call 911 and to locate an automatic external defibrillator (AED), a device that delivers an electric shock aimed at restoring a normal heartbeat. Then Magnus got to work delivering emergency treatment to keep Randy alive.
Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman/Usa Today Network via Imagn Images
Magnus played point guard on his school’s basketball team, the Life Christian Academy Eagles.
What is CPR?
There was a reason Magnus knew what to do in that moment. The previous summer, he had been trained and certified in cardiopulminary resuscitation (CPR) when he took a job as a lifeguard. CPR is an emergency treatment performed when someone’s heart suddenly stops beating (see CPR Basics, below). This condition causes blood to stop moving through the body, depriving the brain and other vital organs of oxygen. CPR helps move a person’s blood through the body until emergency responders arrive.
Each year, more than 356,000 people in the U.S. experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, according to the American Heart Association. That includes more than 7,000 children and teens. Without immediate treatment, cardiac arrest can be deadly. For a person in cardiac arrest, every minute without CPR reduces their chance of survival by 10 percent. But quick action can double or even triple survival rates.
Unfortunately, fewer than half of the people who go into cardiac arrest outside of hospitals get immediate CPR or are treated with an AED. Public places often don’t have enough money to buy AEDs. And many people aren’t trained to use them or to perform CPR.
In 2024, Congress passed the HEARTS Act, which created a grant program to help schools across the country buy AEDs and provide CPR training so more people could learn how to respond in an emergency. However, lawmakers have not yet approved spending the money to fund the program.
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Magnus visited Randy, the boy he had saved, at the hospital.
Quick Action
Luckily, the small rural high school that was hosting the basketball tournament had an AED. A student who’d been watching the game ran to get the device as soon as Randy collapsed.
Magnus grabbed the AED and tilted Randy’s head to get his airway open. Then he started giving instructions. At Magnus’s direction, two people—one on each side of Randy’s torso—began taking turns doing chest compressions. Two others at his head traded off doing mouth-to-mouth breathing, using their own breath to blow air into Randy’s lungs. Magnus yelled for scissors, and someone handed him a pair. He cut open Randy’s basketball jersey and used the AED to shock his heart. “That’s really what saved his life,” Magnus says.
Magnus and the team of volunteers continued CPR as they waited for help to arrive. Performing chest compressions is hard work. Magnus was like a conductor, directing volunteers to switch off as each person got tired. Finally, after about 30 minutes, Randy was flown by helicopter to the University of Oklahoma Medical Center.
“It was a crazy emotional experience once he got stretchered away,” Magnus says. “I started crying on the court.”
Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman/USA Today Network via Imagn Images
The teens reunited at a game weeks later.
The Aftermath
Heartland Medial Direction, OKC, OK
Magnus with an AED, a device that can restart the heart
Randy spent a night in the intensive care unit and regained consciousness the next day. He soon made a full recovery.
Magnus’s actions on the court that day in January 2025 earned him the American Heart Association’s Heartsaver Hero award. Since then, he’s become an ambassador for the organization, working to educate the public on the importance of learning CPR.
In October, Magnus, who is now a first-year student at the University of Oklahoma, traveled to Washington, D.C., to urge Congress to provide enough funding for all K-12 schools to buy lifesaving equipment.
When Magnus tells the story of Randy’s collapse and the CPR that saved his life, he’s overwhelmed with gratitude that all the pieces fell into place: that he knew what to do, that the school had an AED, and that all the other people at the game calmly followed his directions.
A few days after that fateful basketball game, and once Randy had substantially recovered, Magnus visited him at the hospital. “There was no way you were going to die on that court,” Magnus told Randy as the two students embraced. “I wasn’t going to let you.”
