Sixty-six-year-old Michael Wofford required two electric shocks from an AED (automated external defibrillator) on Saturday, after suffering a heart attack during a charity walk for the American Heart Association, in order to regain a pulse.

Wofford went into cardiac arrest at the Upstate New York event suddenly over the weekend, local NBC affiliate WKTV reported. Fortunately, the 66-year-old wasn’t far from help. Gastroenterologist Dr. Bradley Sklar was in attendance to support his 18-year-old son, Ben, who has a congenital heart condition. Sklar and other personnel rushed up to Wofford and began administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth.

“I heard commotion and out of the corner of my eye I saw commotion. Someone said ‘Brad, we need your help, we need a doctor,’” Sklar told WKTV. “I started walking over to what I saw was a person down on the ground.”

Wofford was blue when the doctor approached him. Sklar called the rescue a “joint effort.” While he performed CPR, nurse Courtney Daviau gave Wofford mouth-to-mouth, and state troopers administered AED shocks to the unconscious man. The first shock registered nothing. “There was a lot of people doing things at the time,” Sklar said. The second shock jumpstarted a pulse.

In the past few months, Sklar said, he’s had to perform CPR several times. If it weren’t for the advances in medical technology, his son — who required surgery as an infant to treat his condition — wouldn’t be alive. He remarked on the timing of the man’s life-threatening attack. “How ironic is it that your CPR protocol from the American Heart Association is used here?”