Survivor of heart attack plans to cover same Mount Spokane trail a year from incident

A year ago, Rick Hosmer rode his mountain bike on the same Mount Spokane State Park trails he often covered before. It was almost his last.

On that Aug. 21 day, Hosmer couldn’t catch his breath.

Fit and without any history of heart disease, Hosmer frequently went on outdoor activities with friend Michael Clough, who was cycling beside him to Quartz Mountain. Hosmer thought it was the heat or prior vacation time off. He stopped to rest, felt worse and broke out in a sweat.

Initially, Hosmer didn’t consider he was having a heart attack – much less the “widowmaker” – caused by a full blockage in the heart’s largest artery. With quick help, he survived.

“I couldn’t think of what was happening, but I knew something was not right,” said Hosmer, 62.

“On about the third hill, I thought, I’m not feeling it today; I’m just going to walk up this hill. I got to the top of that hill and thought, even walking, that hill really kicked my butt. I need to take a break.”

He stood still. That didn’t help. He sat and still felt awful, so he phoned his wife, who called an ambulance. Clough biked down for help.

As Hosmer laid his head on a rock, he took a selfie, which he laughs about now. At the time, he was unsure if it would be his last photo.

“It ended up being that I had a blood clot formed in my heart that blocked the blood flow,” Hosmer said. “That’s why I couldn’t catch my breath.”

Clough found two volunteer trail workers who had a vehicle to get Hosmer back to a parking area, where an ambulance crew told Hosmer he was having a heart attack. He needed to get to the hospital by helicopter.

Life Flight took him to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center for a heart catheterization, using a thin tube guided through a blood vessel for a procedure to open the clogged artery. Doctors put in a stent. Hosmer briefly had a tiny implanted device to help pull blood out of the heart, but it was later removed.

Now recovered, Hosmer plans Saturday to hike the same Mount Spokane trail with wife Christine, family and Clough. An initial plan was derailed by wildfires.

Hosmer is known in Spokane as a principal in a longtime ad agency, formerly Klündt Hosmer. It was acquired in July 2022 by the Boise agency 116 & West. Under a two-year agreement, Hosmer has kept working.

Dr. Deirdre Mooney, one of Hosmer’s cardiologists, said this type of heart attack is often deadly. His otherwise good health and fitness were factors in his survival, she said.

“He had a complete clot blocking most of his anterior descending artery,” she said.

Sometimes called the left anterior descending artery, it carries a significant amount of the blood to heart muscle. She said the widowmaker name ties into how heart attacks are more common in men and at an earlier age, in their 60s. Women can have them, but typically at age 72 or older.

A fast medical response is key, Mooney said. That’s because the longer it takes for surgeons to open up an artery, the more damage is made to the heart muscle.

Hosmer likely was working his body harder than usual on a hot day.

“He might have had to ask more of his body, and the blood clotted,” she said. When someone has cholesterol deposits – called plaque – in the heart arteries, there can be unexpected instability of that plaque.

“Just like a pimple can rupture, the plaque can rupture, then the blood going through creates this cascade of events that basically forms a blood clot there,” Mooney said.

People who survive this type of heart attack can end up with other damaged organs or in need of a heart transplant, she said. Hosmer didn’t have such cascading health issues, because his body was fit and in general good health, so his heart could heal faster.

“My fear would be that someone would misread his story and walk away saying that everything he did being healthy didn’t matter – he had a bad heart attack – and I’d say it’s the complete opposite,” Mooney said.

“He lived a heart-healthy lifestyle and probably delayed what could have been heart attacks in his 30s, 40s or 50s, and instead it happened in his 60s. It happened in a body that was well taken care of. He didn’t end up on a dialysis machine, have liver injury, have impaired lung function. He made it through with the least complications possible.”

After weeks of rest, cardiac rehab and doctors’ OK to exercise, Hosmer cycled relatively soon but on flat trails.

“When I was doing my cardiac rehab at St. Luke’s, I’m walking on the treadmill and looking out their windows right at Quartz Mountain,” Hosmer said. “I thought when I’m able to and on the anniversary of that heart attack, I want to go back there.”

He jokes that he wants to find the rock where he rested his head to take a much-improved selfie.

“That could have been where my days ended, very easily. My wife, kids, business associates – they could look at Mount Spokane – and say, ‘That’s where Rick died.’ But that didn’t happen. To me, there is something significant about that spot, and not just that I had a heart attack there, but that I survived the heart attack.”

Hosmer said a small, lower part of heart muscle was damaged, but tests a few months ago showed improvement. He has to take some heart-related medications.

“It’s just this bottom part of the muscle that didn’t have blood flow,” he said. Time will tell. “I’m not sitting in a recliner waiting to find out.”

Since his heart attack, Hosmer was able to thank most people who came to his aid, except for the two women volunteering on the trail that day. He’d love to meet them. They were perhaps half a mile up from the parking area, he said, plus they had a trailhead gate key for the drive back.

If his friend had to find someone in the parking area, they would have had to locate a ranger for the gate key to drive a vehicle up to him.

“With that time, I likely wouldn’t have made it off the mountain,” he said.

One phrase in hospital cardiac literature bothered Hosmer – “living with heart failure.” His heart never stopped beating.

“I had a heart attack, and it wasn’t brought on by heart disease, so to me it was as if I crashed on my mountain bike and I broke my leg really badly.” The injury would require treatment, rehabilitation and perhaps cause a limp, “but no one says, ‘living with leg failure.’ ”

A heart attack also isn’t the end of an active life, he said.

“Listen to your doctors, but if they’re telling you, ‘Go walk and do everything you want to do,’ then go walk and do everything you want to do, because you can come through this healthier. I didn’t give up on that mountain, and doctors told me that my attitude and not panicking is part of the reason I survived.”