Comedian Drew Lynch was onstage and had just begun his stand-up set at the Spokane Comedy Club when he saw a commotion in the audience.

“Hey, everything okay?” he asked into the microphone.

“No,” someone responded. A member of the audience was in medical distress.

People called 911, and an EMT and two emergency room nurses in the audience began chest compressions. The man, who was attending the show with his son and daughter-in-law, did not have a pulse for five minutes.

“It was the longest five minutes of my whole life,” Lynch told The Washington Post. “I was in shock.”

The man, Dick Wende, 83, was in cardiac arrest, said his son, Nathan Wende.

“They couldn’t even shock him because he didn’t have a shockable rhythm,” said Nathan Wende, noting that his father has congestive heart fai

See Full Page