A patient was waiting for a new heart. It was stuck on the side of a road in Illinois

A doctor taking a donor’s heart to a patient waiting at a Chicago hospital had been traveling for hours and didn’t have much time.

The doctor, a transplant coordinator and a medical student had just landed at the airport and were driving toward the hospital early Tuesday morning, officials said.

Then their vehicle blew a tire.

“Time is of the essence when it comes to transplant surgery,” Ashley Heher, a spokeswoman for University of Chicago Medicine said in a news release. “There is about a four- to six-hour window of time for a heart to remain viable for surgery and the team had already been traveling for approximately three hours.”

That’s when two young Illinois State Police troopers, who’d just graduated from the academy a year ago, stopped to help. They knew time was important.

So, they loaded up the trio of medical professionals and the organ and took off for the hospital. The officers arrived in time for the patient to undergo surgery, and the person is recovering, officials said.

“Our District Chicago Troopers were able to turn a potentially bad situation into a thankful ending for at least one family this Thanksgiving holiday,” interim Capt. Angelo Mollo wrote in the news release. “I am extremely proud of our officers who acted without hesitation in this life saving transport.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 4:28 PM with the headline "A patient was waiting for a new heart. It was stuck on the side of a road in Illinois."