SAN ANTONIO — An Army veteran and an Air Force veteran, two generations apart. But now, tied together forever because one of them ended up saving the other's life. Not in combat, but in a parking lot on San Antonio's north side.
"We stopped at McDonald's and we got all his stuff that he wanted to eat and we started to head over to Great Clips," said Cecilia Neathery who is talking about the morning of February 5th of this year, when she was taking her Air Force veteran father, John Curney, to his regular haircut on his birthday. But the sausage biscuit Curney was eating became lodged in his throat, and had other plans for him. Neathery said, "I noticed that he couldn't talk. And I asked him, Are you choking? And he kind of shook his head yes."
"I was thinking, 'I'm choking and I'm gonna die,'" John Curney told us.
"He was turning blue and purple at this time. His lips, his neck," Neathery added.
Neathery found a parking lot just across the street by Banfield Animal Hospital and Great Clips. Her father had already been without air for a minute. She knew she only had seconds to figure out how to save his life.
"As the cars were driving by, I tried to stop somebody, but there were no cars driving by," Neathery told us.
That was when 16-year Army veteran Adam Green spotted the struggling senior.
"I saw the desperation and and fear in her eyes, and I just I figured I had to stop and see what was going on," Green said.
Neathery added, "And so he pulled in his truck and he came over and I told him, dad, my dad was choking."
Green immediately sprung into action and administered the Heimlich."
"Everything came out. The dough, the sausage. And then I could breathe again," Curney said.
He even went to have a birthday lunch later that day. A birthday lunch he almost didn't make it to.
"I'm glad I was running late because if I wasn't running late, I never would have came across them. You know, the outcome could have been different," Green said.
"He's my hero for saving my dad's life," Neathery said. "I love you, Adam."