Man meets volunteer paramedic who saved his life

"She is brilliant, I can't thank her enough," says a football fan after he meets the woman who saved his life for the first time.

Bob Dewane went into cardiac arrest as he was crossing the footbridge at Fratton Station in September after Portsmouth's match against Sheffield Wednesday.

At the moment Bob collapsed, St John Ambulance volunteer Sarah Taylor arrived at the station on a train from Guildford.

The BBC was invited to watch the emotional moment they met at Bob's home, where Sarah hugged him and said: "I'm so glad that it was a positive outcome and that you're still here."

She added: "Normally what happens is we deal with a patient, they go off to hospital and we never find out what happens next."

Sarah, who is originally from Sheffield, was at the station to meet her partner and sons who had been at the match.

She was still wearing her St John Ambulance uniform after attending an event where she showed people how to perform CPR as part of the charity's Save a Life September campaign.

A Portsmouth fan saw Sarah in her uniform and alerted her to Bob, who was at the top of a flight of stairs.

"I went and did my ABCs and found out that Bob wasn't breathing, so rolled him over, started CPR," she said.

Sarah continued until the ambulance crew arrived and thanks to her efforts Bob was breathing again.

Bob's daughter Amy, who was not with him when it happened, later traced a father and son on social media who had first started giving him CPR, but could not find the woman who helped.

Sarah was tracked down by BBC Radio Solent, which introduced her to Amy on air.

"I can't express how wonderful she is," said Bob's wife Jackie, meeting Sarah for the first time, hugging her and handing her a bouquet of flowers.

She remembered how seeing her husband in hospital on that day was "the most horrific sight" she had seen.

After some weeks and a triple bypass operation, Bob was able to recover and the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in hospital.

"I'm told that I snuffed it for 10 minutes and they brought me back," Bob said.

He joked: "I've often said having come out of there from a bad day 'you know watching this thing is going to be the death of me' and it turned out that on this occasion it nearly was."

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