Jennifer Miller was approaching mile 17 of the 2023 Marine Corps Marathon when she saw a man collapsed on the grass near the Lincoln Memorial.
“I had just seen him laying there and nobody else was around him, which was really alarming,” Miller, 33 and a registered nurse, told Military.com on Friday. The man’s color was pale, his breathing was labored, and his pulse was weak. He was unresponsive.
“Immediately, it wasn’t about the race anymore,” she said. “I was in nurse mode and doing everything I could to assist.”
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Miller called for help and began CPR. At the time, she didn’t know anything about the man she was working on besides his bib number — 13111. A bystander, trying to find contact information for the man, grabbed his phone; the screensaver showed a picture of a young girl, which turned out to be one of the collapsed runner’s two daughters.
“I don’t know who this guy is or the relationship of this girl to him, but I have to do everything I can to make sure he makes it home,” Miller told the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department, also known as D.C. Fire and EMS, in a recorded interview. “Whoever this person is, they’re important enough to be on his phone screen, and that was important to me.”
The man on the ground at the Oct. 29 race turned out to be 1st Sgt. Peter Battershall, a Marine assigned…
