COEUR d’ALENE — Lara Jarrett was on her way home after a long day at Kootenai Health, where she is a nurse.

Traffic on Northwest Boulevard was tangled. The exit for westbound Interstate 90, where she was headed, was coming up when Jarrett saw a truck stopped in the middle of the road.

“What’s going on?” she wondered.

Jarrett pulled over. Others were there.

An elderly man was struggling to breathe.

“I just stopped because I didn’t see any ambulance there yet and wanted to see if I could help,” she said.

The man had gone into cardiac arrest. Jarrett’s training and instinct kicked in. She knew in such situations, quick intervention is critical. She began performing CPR and kept it up for several minutes until paramedics arrived, while calming the man’s worried wife and even having her provide assistance.

It was just a short time, but seemed longer.

“When you’re in the moment in the things like that, a minute seems like forever,” Jarrett said.

Her actions on that mid-October evening are being credited with saving the man, a resident of Dalton Gardens. He went on to recover at Kootenai Health and had a pacemaker put in. He has since returned home.

The man’s daughter, Sharon, who asked that her last name not be used, said she is forever grateful to Jarrett. His wife even referred to her as an angel.

“She stopped. That made the difference between life and death for my father,” said Sharon, a Las Vegas resident who grew up in Coeur d’Alene. “We’re feeling very blessed.”

Sharon said it was a miracle.

“Our mother recalls someone knocking on the driver’s side window and said there was an angel who appeared out of nowhere,” she said. “She looked up and said, ‘There was my angel. My angel's standing in the doorway.'”

“We have all heard the saying that angels walk among us,” Sharon added. “It is rare that one has the opportunity to meet one and especially in such a profound and life changing way.”

The angel wasn’t done with this family.

“Our mother had said that she would love to thank the angel who showed up that day but we had no idea of how to find her and assumed we would never know her identity,” Sharon wrote. “During my father’s recovery, our mother was in the room with him and heard someone in the doorway saying hello. Ironically, their angel found them!”

Jarrett surprised husband and wife of nearly 60 years when she officially met them as his discharging nurse. She even wheeled him out to his vehicle.

“I was able to have the joy of sending him home after his stay,” Jarrett said. “Kind of crazy the whole chain of events from me staying late, to stopping to help, to being able to send him home.”

Jarrett has been a nurse six years. She’s handled life-saving situations at work, but this was her first drive-by emergency.

Outwardly she was calm. Inside, she was scared.

But she gained control by assessing the situation, asking questions and running through a mental checklist.

Later, reflecting on what happened and the outcome, she called it “pretty amazing.”

She said a lot of circumstances — getting off late, the traffic, where the man’s truck stopped on Northwest Boulevard — put her in the right place at the right time.

Others were there but didn’t know what to do. Because she was a nurse, she recognized that the man was going into cardiac arrest.

“It was lucky I was there. With my training, I was able to react in that way.”

Jarrett has been in contact with the couple since the incident and was pleased to hear the man is recovering. She downplayed her role, saying others have done the same thing with no recognition.

She hopes people will register for training, such as CPR classes, to be able to recognize what’s happening and respond in medical emergencies.

“You’d be surprised what you can do in a situation like that,” she said.

Sharon said it was hard to find the words to show her appreciation for what Jarrett did.

But she found them.

“Thank you, Laura Jarrett. You will forever be our angel.”