SOMETIMES THE ODDS are with you.
Sometimes they're against you.
Sometimes it's a little of both.
Case in point: Renton's Craig Riggs, a man who didn't need a wake-up call when it came to cardiovascular disease.
He already got one in 1970 when his 59-year-old father suffered a heart attack, then a second one in 1980 when his mother, then 61, died from the same cause.
And he got yet another the day his older brother, a marathon runner then living in Honolulu, had trouble walking from church. Since, he has had five angioplasties.
Call it a trend hard to ignore.
For years, Riggs, now 60, pursued a health-conscious and active lifestyle -- swimming, cycling and playing tennis three to four times a week. A love for physical challenge drove him. So did his intention of beating the genetic odds.
But on Aug. 6, 2007, Riggs was playing tennis at the Boeing Employees Tennis Club in Kent when he suddenly felt exhausted. He took a break, then collapsed unconscious.
Two teaching pros had a class nearby, he says, and a nurse enrolled in the class recognized he was having a heart attack.
They began CPR. Someone ran for the defibrillator, and by the time they returned, medics were at his side, shocking Riggs three times to restart his heart.
Rushed to Valley Medical Center where he was stabilized, Riggs was then taken to Swedish, the place he was both born -- and nearly died.
Twenty-four hours after his heart attack, Riggs regained consciousness.
His wife, Tammy, who was home preparing dinner when the call came that he'd collapsed, whispered in his ear, "You've had a heart attack."
It was, Riggs says, "extremely sobering. You assume you're doing the right things, taking care of yourself, working out. And it still happens."
He underwent a triple bypass. Doctors told him fewer than 80 percent of the patients who suffer the kind of heart attack he had survived.
He was one of the lucky ones.
The odds, he says, were in his favor the day he collapsed because of where he was and the immediacy of emergency response.
It might have been otherwise.
Three days earlier he'd gone out alone on a bike ride up a steep trail above the Auburn golf course.
"If I'd the heart attack then, I wouldn't have survived," he says. "The doctor said I could have had it at any time in the past five years. I had it in the best possible scenario. All of the things were lined up for me that day."
Now recovered, Riggs is back living an active lifestyle.
But some things have changed.
"I was playing singles when I had my heart attack," he says. "It's my love. I'm very competitive. But now I'm playing doubles. I haven't been able to bring myself to a competitive set of singles. It (the heart attack) is always in the back of your mind.
"I'm not exactly fear-free. That's for sure."
On Saturday, Oct. 4, Riggs and his wife will be among more than 8,000 walkers expected to take part in the Start! Puget Sound Heart Walk at Qwest Field. The event raises money for research, education and a better quality of care for patients.
For Riggs, it's distinctly personal.
After all, "there's the technology they used to keep me alive and stabilize me and do the triple bypass," says Riggs, who recruited a 10-member team for the event. "It was easy to recruit people."
The day he almost died put life into perspective.
"It changes everything," he says. "I don't stress over the little things like I used to. In a way, it really is a gift. You consider it a gift to meet new people. It's amazing. I got a strong reminder of all that, for sure."
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