Woman was dead for 27 minutes, but as soon as she woke up she scribbled a spine-chilling message
Tina and her husband Brian were college sweethearts. They met at Biola University, a Christian school in California. They’d shared a couple of classes together. Of course, the pair couldn’t have known back then that years later, Brian would one day be tasked with saving Tina’s life.
Recalling those early days at college in a June interview for Phoenix’s American Heart Association, Brian said of Tina, “She was tall, she was athletic. She’d be jogging by, or she could be going someplace, and I’d say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ And she’d say, ‘I’m going running.’ So, I’d say hi to her.
From there, Brian and Tina’s relationship progressed quickly and with ease. “A friendship started and then we got engaged,” Ryan explained. “Then six months later, we got married.” Revealing his love for Tina, he added, “She made things that I like to do, and she made them better by being there.”
Given that Brian was Tina’s husband, it’s perhaps unsurprising that he had good things to say about the mother of his children. But he wasn’t the only one to sing her praises. Family friend Jeff Logas told Phoenix’s American Heart Association, “Tina is adored by everybody. Brian and Tina, their family, they spread so much joy and happiness in everybody’s life.” Tina and Brian would go on to have a family of four children and eventually settled into Phoenix, Arizona. It was at their home in the city that the couple’s world was almost shattered when Tina suffered a heart attack. However, the story took a miraculous turn as Tina somehow woke up after being dead for 27 minutes.
The strange events unfolded on February 12, . It was just like any normal Monday, Brian told Phoenix’s American Heart Association. The couple had been out for a hike before their good friend Jeff called in to see them. However, shortly after he arrived at their home, disaster struck. “When I got here, Tina and I were standing shoulder to shoulder,” Jeff recalled. “One second,” Jeff recalled. “The next second, Tina had fallen virtually straight face forward into the rocks.” Realizing something was wrong, he yelled out to Brian to call 9-1-1.
Given that Tina had appeared in good health mere moments earlier, Brian was at first confused by Jeff’s demand. However, when he saw his wife on the ground, he knew that her condition had taken a serious nosedive. So, with Tina’s life seemingly hanging in the balance, Brian called emergency services. From what he could see, Brian believed that Tina was having a heart attack. Even more worryingly, she’d passed out and wasn’t breathing.
As a result, Brian was instructed to lie Tina flat on her back so that he or Jeff could carry out CPR. Together, they battled to keep Tina alive until emergency services arrived to take over. The emergency call handler told Brian that Tina needed chest compressions. Describing what happened next, he told Phoenix’s American Heart Association, “Jeff immediately, because I’m talking to the 9-1-1 operator, he started pushing down on Tina’s chest. Neither one of us had any kind of training at all.”
Given the physical exertion that CPR can require, however, Jeff soon tired. As a result, it fell to a distraught Brian to save Tina’s life. “She was superwoman,” Brian stated. “Here was the girl that I’d known for 30 plus years that’s worked out every day to not have this happen, and here she is dying, and I was just pushing as hard as I could.”
During the ordeal, Brian had truly believed that Tina was losing her life. And speaking to Good Morning Arizona in May 2018, months after his wife’s heart attack, it appeared he was still haunted by what he’d seen that day. “Her eyelids didn’t close,” Ryan explained. “Her eyelids were open, and her eyes were rolled back into the top of her head.
Once the fire service personnel arrived at the scene, they took over from Brian. Now, all the concerned husband could do was watch, undoubtedly in horror, as firefighters tried to save Tina’s life. In the end, the crew gave Tina five electric shocks on the way to the hospital in a desperate bid to kickstart her heart. However, according to firefighter Joe Sandman, it was Brian’s actions that had prevented Tina from dying on the sidewalk outside her home. Sandman told Phoenix’s American Heart Association, “What Tina’s husband did prior to our arrival, continuous chest compressions before we got there, is what saved his wife’s life.”
But while Tina would survive her ordeal, things seemed touch and go for a while. By the time she was loaded onto an ambulance, she still hadn’t responded. As a result, Brian had to come to terms with the fact that his beloved wife might not survive. And in that desperate moment, Brian turned to God. Recalling his prayers, Brian stated that he tried to make a deal with the big man above. “I told God that if he gave me Tina back, then he could take anything else,” Brian said.
He could take all our cars. He could take all my stuff. I don’t need that stuff. I needed Tina.” And it seems that Brian’s prayers may have paid off because after arrival at the hospital, a doctor told him that his wife was alive. For Brian, Tina’s survival was nothing short of a miracle. He truly believed that God had granted him his wish. And what transpired later would appear to confirm his suspicions.
That’s because while Tina laid lifeless for 27 minutes, she believes that she had a so-called afterlife experience. And Tina isn’t the first person to report they’d have a spiritual out-of-body experience when on the cusp of death. Indeed, some individuals who’ve been brought back to life have reported seeing bright lights or frightening beings.
Given that no one knows what happens to us when we leave this world, afterlife experiences are the subject of much fascination. In fact, there’s even a Near Death Experience Research Foundation. The organization gathers testimonies from people around the globe who’ve been brought back from the brink in a bid to understand more about what might happen to us when we die.
With that in mind, the Near Death Experience Research Foundation’s website is filled with amazing stories that may offer an insight into what death has in store. Some accounts are pretty unsettling; however, nonetheless, many people who’ve had visions during a near-death experience have reported feelings of serenity and warmth while they basked in a brilliant light.
A man going by the name of Richard L stated that he’d felt calm when coming close to death following a seizure. In his testimony to the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, he said, “I felt no pain. I felt an unending love and a sense of peace as I kept floating towards the light.” Similarly, heart attack survivor Heidi C described seeing the most beautiful white-golden light. She added, “There are no words to really express or articulate how I felt or to describe the beautiful light and warmth that I was bathed in. The colors and feelings were a million times magnified.
As Tina revived time and time again by emergency services, little did her distraught husband Brian know that she too was having one of these afterlife experiences. The first he would learn of the matter was when Tina came around and was seemingly in a hurry to tell her surrounding family members something. Unable to speak due to a tube in her mouth, Tina was handed a pen and paper to help her communicate. In an almost unintelligible scroll, she simply wrote, “It’s real.” Confused, Brian asked his wife what was real. That’s when she pointed upwards towards heaven with tears filling her eyes.
Tina later divulged more details of her afterlife experience in an interview with Good Morning Arizona in 2018. She claimed that she’d seen Jesus standing in front of some black gates that led to a beaming yellow light. Tina added, “It was so real. The colors were so vibrant.” And for Tina, there’s little doubt that what she saw that day was a little piece of heaven. Referring to the number of times she was resuscitated following her heart attack, she said, “From what the paramedics shared with us, is that truly, I died five times.
And like many other accounts of afterlife experiences, Tina’s included a distinct vision of light. “It was bright yellow, so it was almost like that envision of a sun,” she told Good Morning Arizona. And it was within those golden rays that Tina claims she saw Jesus just standing there.
Given Tina’s vision, both she and Brian are convinced that it was God’s will to save her life. As a result, the couple have discovered a new appreciation for life. “I’m just so thankful that he didn’t take you right then,” Brian told Tina. “Right now, you got to stay and still be my wife.” Moreover, that isn’t the only way in which Tina and Brian’s lives are changed in the wake of her heart attack.
That’s because both of them are now spokespeople for the American Heart Association. And if that wasn’t enough, the couple have also found viral fame on account of Tina’s apparent afterlife experience. Tina and Brian’s story hit social media after their niece Maddie Johnson had a copy of Tina’s “It’s Real” scribble tattooed on her wrist.
She subsequently posted a picture of the spiritual inking on Instagram in June 2019. And alongside the snap, Maddie revealed the meaning behind the tat in the accompanying caption on Instagram. Maddie wrote, “Tina’s story is too real not to share and has given me a stronger confidence in a faith that so often goes unseen. It’s given me a tangibleness to an eternal hope that’s not too far away. I love you @TinaHines. The way you boldly love Jesus and others has changed the way I hope to live and love.”
And Maddie wasn’t the only person eager to spread the word about what Tina had apparently seen as she drifted in and out of consciousness. In fact, Tina herself has opened up about her afterlife experience, even telling her story at Arizona’s Reunion Community Church. And it was there that Tina revealed she was thankful for what had happened. While addressing the church congregation, Tina explained, “I got to be able to talk about seeing the face of Jesus. I see it as such a beautiful, incredible gift.” Where Brian sees it as just an unbelievable, incredible gift that I’m still here. I see it as a gift in a different way, and that I got to literally see Jesus face to face.”
Meanwhile, Brian spoke about his perspective of the incident in his interview with Phoenix’s American Heart Association. “I know that God, the God that I believe touched her heart and allowed her to come back,” Brian said. “He’d heard my plea and had done a miracle in not only letting me have her back but letting me have her back whole.” However, despite their bolstered faith in God, Tina and Brian acknowledged that he wasn’t the only person who’d helped to save Tina’s life. As a result, the couple made sure they visited the 9-1-1 call handler and the firefighters who’d assisted them on that fateful day. It was important for the couple to thank each one in person.
And at least one member of the emergency crew who helped Tina after her heart attack also believed that higher forces had intervened to ensure her survival. “It’s one of those calls that none of us will ever forget,” one of the firefighters told Good Morning Arizona. “I was a witness to a miracle is the way I look at it.” And for Tina, there was one more savior to whom she had to pay tribute for saving her life: her husband of 30 years. After all, it was Brian who’d administered the CPR that kept Tina’s heart moving. His grateful wife told Phoenix’s American Heart Association, “In those few moments, if I was on my own, everything could have been different.”
