Heroic actions save life of Rockwall financial advisor

ROCKWALL, TX – September 21, 2020 — For local financial advisor EJ Pipkin, the difference between life and death amounted to only a matter of minutes.

Earlier this summer Pipkin, a LPL Financial Advisor for the Wealth Management Group of American National Bank of Texas, was in the ANBTX office in Rockwall when he suffered a massive heart attack. His coworker Amanda Pacheco, who was in the room with Pipkin at the moment of his cardiac arrest, began screaming for help. Seeing Pipkin in tremendous distress, Scott Baker, the vice president of commercial lending at the ANBTX in Rockwall, knew he had to act fast to save his life. He performed CPR on Pipkin until the paramedics arrived on the scene to transport him to the hospital.

After major heart surgery, Pipkin ended up surviving the incident and is in good health to this day.

“I could tell he was in distress, and it was just instinct to do everything I could to help him,” Baker said. “I’m just glad he was able to make it through and that we could be there for him in that moment.”

Call it fate, or just mere coincidence. But had Pacheco not been in the room at that exact moment in time, and were it not for the heroic efforts of Baker, Pipkin would likely not be alive today.

“It was God’s plan that put me in that room at that time,” Pacheco said. “If it hadn’t happened the way that it did, he wouldn’t be here with us today.”

By Austin Wells, Blue Ribbon News. Courtesy photo.

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