Full Circle

Androcles, the Roman slave who removed a thorn from a lion’s paw, was later spared from death when the lion recognized him in front of a bloodthirsty crowd in the Coliseum. The following story also illustrates the inscrutable relationship between connection and coincidence. Call it karma, reaping what you sow, or what goes around comes around; inexorably, like a circle completing itself, scales are balanced and debts repaid.

 
Ed Klemz’s Story
 

My mom, Marge, worked at Sperry Rand in New Brighton, Minnesota for more than 15 years. During that time, a security guard named Charlie was always at his desk, which was elevated so he could look down at the employees when they entered. Charlie was one of those great guys who greeted everyone by their first name and asked how their kids were. There were hundreds and hundreds of employees there and Charlie knew every single one of them.

One day, my mom walked into the guard shack, which she had to walk through to get into the building she worked in. Charlie wasn’t at his desk to buzz her in, so she used her card, entered the building and went up to her office. But something didn’t sit right with her. Not only was Charlie not at his post, there was nobody there, which was even stranger. So instead of sitting down and getting to work, my mom decided to go see what was going on. She walked back downstairs, stood on a pipe, looked over the top of the security counter and saw Charlie lying on the floor. He had had a heart attack and was lying behind the counter where no one could see him. My mom had a loud, booming voice from raising six boys so she hollered for help, got into the security shack and performed basic CPR until the medical professionals at Sperry could get there and take over. All of that saved Charlie’s life.

After recovering, Charlie was able to return to work. One day, a couple of years later, my mom drove to work. Forty-five minutes after she had gotten there, Charlie looked out and saw her car. Thinking it was strange that he hadn’t seen her come in the building, he went outside and walked over to my mom’s car. There, lying on the ground next to her car, was my mom. She had had a heart attack. He immediately called for assistance on his radio and gave her CPR until the professionals showed up. This time, it was Charlie who saved my mom’s life.

It turned out that my mom’s heart was enlarged and blocked, and the doctors gave her six months or less to live. She lived for seven more years. Every day when she’d walk into work and see Charlie, she’d lick her finger, hold it up, make a checkbox in the air and tell Charlie, “One more day.” Thanks to her reaching out to Charlie and saving his life, he was able to reach out to her and keep her alive to enjoy those last years of her life. And they were great years.
 

Ed Klemz is the founder and CEO of Central Coast Solutions, a full-service business technology consulting company in Minnesota.