Matt Kirby hugs Janet Coleman.

NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio – A Discount Drug Mart pharmacist is being recognized as a lifesaver for giving CPR to a customer who passed out inside his store here.

Janet Coleman, 69, of North Olmsted, who has a heart arrhythmia, had gone to the store last month for bread and a newspaper. The last thing she remembers is bending down to check the expiration date on a loaf of bread.

A paramedic in the ambulance that was called told her she had no pulse or heartbeat, but started breathing after pharmacist Matt Kirby gave her CPR.

“You really don’t think, you just snap into action,” Kirby told the Fox 8 TV station. “Once I realized she wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse, compressions, compressions, compressions.”

He said he was on his 22nd compression  “when she gasped and came back.” The ambulance arrived four minutes later.

Kirby called the episode “surreal,” saying he had to sit a while before returning to work.

Medina, Ohio-based Discount Drug Mart said its pharmacists are trained in CPR and are recertified every two years by the Red Cross. It has more than 200 pharmacists trained in the procedure in 75 stores in Ohio.

Coleman was released from the hospital four days later. She told the TV station, “You get a new perspective that people do care about you. You might not know their names. But they care.”