Heroic Neighbor, Luck Save Rigby Man From Gas Leak

A Rigby man is alive thanks to his heroic neighbor and a little luck, which saved him from potentially fatal carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Happy anniversary: You get poisoned,” said Dylan Ausmus.

Ausmus, 18, and his wife, Dottie Ausmus, could joke about their two-week wedding anniversary on Friday, but it wasn’t so funny the day before.

“I remember standing up, and that’s the last thing I remember,” said Dylan Ausmus.

Dylan Ausmus collapsed on the floor of his Rigby apartment.

Dottie Ausmus, who took her lunch break an hour earlier than usual, found him unconscious and foaming at the mouth. Thinking maybe it was a diabetic reaction, she ran across the hall to the Christensens’ apartment.

“My first thought was 911,” said Stephanie Christensen. “Somebody’s got to call 911”

Iraq Army veteran Flint Christensen recognized the smell of gas.

“He had stopped breathing, had a very faint pulse,” said Flint Christensen. “(It) wasn’t looking good.”

So he dragged Dylan Ausmus out into the hallway. Just as he was about to start CPR, Ausmus began to breathe again.

First responders detected unsafe carbon monoxide levels before they reached the top of the stairs, so Flint Christensen threw Dylan Ausmus over his back and carried him downstairs into Papa Kelsey’s sub shop next door.

“I was like, ‘What smells so good?’ recalled Ausmus of waking up.

Ausmus came to when paramedics gave him oxygen.

He was taken to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center by ambulance, where doctors said if he’d been in the apartment just a few minutes more, he wouldn’t have survived.

The newlyweds are grateful Flint Christensen was home.

“He knew exactly what we needed right then,” said Dottie Ausmus.

The father of four credited his military background.

“I would probably be as unprepared as the next guy if I hadn’t had that training,” said Christensen.

Heroics seem to run in the Christensen blood. Just last August, Flint Christensen’s brother, Adam, also an Army vet, helped rescue a family after their car ended up in the Snake River.

“For as long as I can remember, we were always taught if someone’s on the side of the road with flashers, stop and help,” said Flint Christensen of himself and the other half of what he called the “superhero team.”

Flint Christensen attributed Dylan Ausmus’ survival to a combination of Dottie Ausmus’ early lunch break, his training, the first responders’ quick arrival and a little luck.

“We ended up buying him a million-dollar raffle ticket,” said Flint Christensen. “We figure if he was that lucky, he can give us 10 percent before taxes.”

Dylan and Dottie Ausmus want their story to be a lesson for the community. They urge everyone to get a carbon monoxide monitor for their homes.