MOORESVILLE — When North Carolina Masonic Lodge member Ted Sherrod collapsed with a massive heart attack in early November, a fellow Mason came to his rescue.

Sherrod, a licensed professional engineer from Kenly, was in Mooresville to conduct a stormwater and erosion control workshop for Duke Energy Corp. staff and consultants when the pain began.

“I had traveled there from home that morning,” said Sherrod. “I was getting ready to make my presentation and collapsed.”

Fortunately, Dale Wooten of Salisbury quickly came to his aid.

Wooten is a Duke Energy lead environmental, health and safety professional and certified CPR instructor. He happened to be in the same corner of the room as Sherrod when Sherrod fell, and he was one of the first to reach him.

“He literally died in my arms,” said Wooten. “His eyes were open, and he was convulsing, shaking in my arms and then he just stopped.”

Wooten used an automated external defibrillator and performed CPR on Sherrod until emergency medical personnel arrived.

Both men said that everything fell in perfect alignment for Sherrod to survive the heart attack. Most Duke Energy meetings start with a “safety moment,” where participants identify emergency exits and equipment and who will do what in the event of a crisis.

Wooten has 40 years of experience as an emergency medical technician. He also worked three years as a paid firefighter and 20 years as a volunteer.

“I’m a man of faith, and I have strong faith,” said Sherrod. “I basically give all the credit to the Lord. He placed a lot of people around to help me that day, and it’s all to give credit to his name.”

At the time of Sherrod’s heart attack, neither man knew he was helping or being helped by a Masonic brother.

“I was at the right place at the right time for him,” said Wooten. “Wherever I would have been at, I would have helped anyone in that situation to the best of my knowledge.”

With the defibrillator, Wooten administered two shocks to Sherrod between sessions of CPR.

The Mooresville Fire Department administered an additional five shocks before Sherrod was transported to Iredell Memorial Hospital in Statesville.

He left the training center with a pulse, Wooten said.

Sherrod said his survival was a miracle: his heart attack occurred in the left anterior descending artery, what doctors call the “widow maker.”

“Seconds are precious in an event,” said Wooten. “Statistics are not the best in the world for saving someone, but every second, every minute it gets less and less. … It was not his time to go.”

Wooten stayed in touch with Sherrod’s wife throughout the engineer’s recovery. When he finally visited him in the hospital, the pair discovered their Masonic ties.

“When he came into the room, I recognized he was a Mason from his handshake,” said Sherrod. “There’s certain grips where brother Masons know one another at any time. We can recognize one another even if we can’t see each other’s face.”

But the pair wouldn’t voice the connection until Wooten noticed a card posted on Sherrod’s wall during a visit to his hospital room.

The card, from Sherrod’s concerned brothers at the Kenly Lodge, was marked with the Masonic square and compasses.

“We realized we had a lot in common after that,” Wooten said with a laugh. “We both love N.C. State. We even both drive a Prius.”

As Sherrod improved, he was able to return to Kenly Lodge in late December. In his honor, a defibrillator was donated and installed in the lodge on March 6.

Wooten attended the March meeting and assisted in providing training to Kenly Lodge members on how to operate the machine.

“As an average person, you probably don’t think about it,” said Wooten. “I’m looking more now than ever to see where (automatic electronic defibrillators) are.”

Sherrod and Wooten have stayed in touch since, with the Salisbury hero hosting his newfound friend for a return trip after his recovery.

“My wife and I wanted to go back and say thank you to everybody, because I don’t remember anything until that second week,” said Sherrod. “We went back … and I got a chance to meet the fire and rescue guys who helped me in Mooresville. I met the doctor and staff that helped me in Statesville. … I even went to church with Dale.”

Today, Sherrod said he has made a great recovery. He’s on his first vacation since the attack: a tour of national parks in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

“My doctor told me that I could do anything that I wanted to do and that I felt like doing,” he said. “… I put a strong credit to God who began putting all those people in my pathway that day.”