Mölnlycke, Sweden 
Thomas Ravelli understood what a cardiac emergency could mean in a way that most people in his position would not. In 2019, a routine medical check before his appearance on the Swedish television programme Let’s Dance revealed a heart defect that had gone undetected for years. He underwent major heart surgery at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg in 2021. That experience deepened his commitment to Hjärtuppropet and to the broader effort to make defibrillators accessible across Sweden. By the morning he encountered that cyclist in Mölnlycke, he was not simply a public figure lending his name to a campaign. He had lived, firsthand, what the presence of the right equipment at the right moment could mean.
Sunday, August 28, 2022. Thomas Ravelli was out walking in Mölnlycke, the town in southwestern Sweden where he lives. That morning he had made one small, unremarkable decision: he took a different route from the one he normally walked, setting off at a slightly different time. A few streets away, a children’s birthday party was taking place at a private house. One of the guests, an older man, had collapsed without warning on the patio. CPR had started and someone had been sent out by bicycle to find a defibrillator. That cyclist was still moving through the streets when he came around a corner and found Thomas walking towards him.
Thomas Ravelli had been an ambassador for Hjärtuppropet, Sweden’s national heart awareness campaign, for several years before that morning. He had taken the role seriously enough to keep a personal AED at home. When the cyclist explained what had happened, Thomas called his wife and asked her to pass the AED to the man waiting outside, then ran directly to the house. Anna Windevall was already on the patio, kneeling beside the older man and keeping the compressions going. When the AED arrived, Thomas connected it. The machine analyzed the heart rhythm, advised a shock, and guided them through each step clearly and calmly. They delivered the shock together. The man regained consciousness before the ambulance arrived.
