KDKA anchor, back on air, recounts close call

KDKA-TV news anchor Susan Koeppen returned to the air on Monday, two months after collapsing and going into cardiac arrest while training for a half marathon.

"The doctors have now cleared me to be back on the air," Koeppen told viewers during her regular 6 p.m. newscast. "I'm so happy to be here."

Koeppen, who said she was diagnosed a few years ago with a serious heart valve condition, was running with two friends when she collapsed along South Negley Avenue in Shadyside.

"Nov. 20 is a date I will never forget," Koeppen told viewers. "We just went for a run that day and I went down for the count. It was not a heart attack. It was cardiac arrest."

Two third-year medical students who were driving by stopped and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation until firefighters acting as first responders arrived and used a defibrillator to get her heart beating again.

Koeppen, an award-winning journalist and mother of three who returned to Pittsburgh airways on Sept. 19 to co-anchor KDKA's 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, said she didn't know what happened until she awoke a few days later in UPMC Shadyside.

"I'm here. Obviously, it wasn't my time," said Koeppen, who now has an automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator that sends electrical pulses to keep the heart in normal rhythm.

Koeppen, who was a consumer reporter and weekend anchor for WTAE-TV before becoming the consumer correspondent for CBS News' "The Early Show" in 2004, said she will only be able to do the 6 p.m. newscasts at this time.

She still faces open heart surgery to repair the valve.

"The doctors say that once it's fixed, I'll be back out running."