There’s a worn-out advertising cliche that probably makes you shudder. You know the one: Advertising is all about finding the right consumer at the right time in the right place.

When VMLY&R CEO Jon Cook collapsed in Kansas City last year, he benefited from a series of coincidences that led the right people at the right time to the right place to save his life.

See, Cook always wears his Apple Watch. While that device performs many roles, the one he really needed to function last year—tracking his heart activity—had broken three weeks earlier. During those same three weeks, his heart happened to develop an atrial flutter. Essentially, his heart couldn’t stop rapidly beating and wearing itself out to the tune of 200-300 beats per minute.

“This was a story of a massive amount of either angels or coincidences,” Cook told Adweek. “I basically died for nine minutes.”

Here’s where those karmic coincidences kick in. After getting a beer with a VMLY&R colleague, Cook went for a run. Two minutes into that jog, he crouched over on a political sign (for a candidate he intended to vote for) and then collapsed.

A woman who happened to be a nurse practitioner at a children’s hospital was walking her dog and stopped to help him. Another woman, Sarrisa Curry, who is certified in CPR but lives out of town, was on her way to get ice cream with her family following a high school sporting event when she saw the nurse practitioner performing CPR.

“She’s just not from anywhere near where I live, and so that was a once in a million thing that she was there that night at that spot,” Cook said.

And the kicker: Cardio internist Prakash Acharya—the ideal medical professional for this scenario—was driving by and stopped. Three people, all trained to save an unresponsive person’s life, were present in the exact place to bring Cook back from the brink of death.

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