A former ambulance call handler has received a Royal Humane Society award after saving the life of a 75-year-old stranger who collapsed in cardiac arrest on a pavement in south Wales.
Rachel Green was driving through the village of Sully in the Vale of Glamorgan in December 2025 when she noticed two Shih-Tzus standing unattended and pulled over. On the pavement she found Alan Hale, 75, face down and not breathing normally. Her intervention, according to his own consultant, gave him a chance of survival where otherwise he would have had almost none.
How the rescue in Sully unfolded
According to the BBC, which first reported the story on 17 October, Hale had been waiting at a bus stop with his dogs, Toffee and Poppy, when he collapsed face first into the pavement. He remembers leaving his house and nothing afterwards.
Green, a mother of two who spent 13 years taking emergency calls for the ambulance service, said something about the scene struck her as wrong. She had never dealt with an emergency face to face, only by telephone.
I thought 'that's weird, why has someone left their dogs there'?
She found Hale in a pool of blood where he had smashed into the floor. His breathing was abnormal, so she called 999 and began chest compressions. The call handler told her where the nearest defibrillator was kept, inside the apartment complex where Hale lives, and the groundskeeper, Ryan Harrison, retrieved it.
Others gathered to help, including an off-duty nurse. Green said the group delivered a single shock with the defibrillator, which seemed to restore his heartbeat, and continued resuscitation until paramedics arrived.
A 2 per cent chance without help
Hale regained consciousness at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, on the cardiac ward, where surgeons fitted four stents. His consultant told him that without the strangers who came to his aid, his chances of survival were 2 per cent.
This lady saved my life.
He added: