[Ed. Note: For an interview with Mack Godbee by Eric Harvey of Peekskill Herald, visit PeekskillHerald.com.]
by Mount Sinai Press Office
A Peekskill man who devotes his life to teaching CPR to his community and family is sharing his miraculous story of survival after needing CPR himself after a major health emergency. It turns out his own daughter helped save his life by giving him CPR after he collapsed in his own driveway from cardiac arrest.
His condition was so dire he ended up at the hospital in desperate need of a heart, liver, and kidney transplant to survive. Thanks to his daughter’s quick action reviving him, he got an historic triple transplant — the first of its kind in New York City, and one of few across the country. Now, our patient has a new chance at life and the incredible chance to watch his grandchildren grow up.
He’s sharing his story to emphasize the importance of knowing CPR and hopes his transplant journey encourages others to never give up when faced with adversity.
Peekskill resident Mack Godbee, 64, is a devoted husband, father, and grandfather of five. He’s also the captain of the city’s ambulance corps and for the last 40 years he has worked tirelessly to train his Westchester community and his own family members on CPR.
He has a rare condition called sarcoid cardiomyopathy — an autoimmune disorder that damages the heart. This led to him needing an initial heart transplant in 2002.
Godbee felt fine with the transplant for two decades — but this drastically changed last year. He became extremely weak and out of breath doing basic daily tasks, and his heart was failing. Then, in August 2024, he had a scare he and he and his family will never forget. He went outside to look for his cat and reached in his car for a flashlight. Seconds later, he went into cardiac arrest and his own daughter, Krista, found him unconscious, on his knees in the back of the car, and immediately started CPR to revive him. Her dad is the one who taught her CPR — something that saved his life.
Godbee was rushed to the hospital where he got a defibrillator implanted to shock his heart into a normal rhythm and keep him alive until his heart stabilized.
But his symptoms weren’t improving and in December he went back to his doctors at the Mount Sinai Hospital, where they told him he needed another heart transplant to survive. However, his case was extremely complex and risky.
That’s because his kidneys and liver were failing too; his body wasn’t strong enough to get a heart transplant and he needed a new kidney and liver as well.
A triple transplant of this kind is risky, especially since this would be a repeat heart transplant. Godbee was shocked by this news but refused to give up. He knew he had no choice but to move forward with this high-risk surgery in order to live and watch his grandkids grow up.
He was put on the transplant list and weeks later he got the news that there was a donor for all three organs. He had the triple transplant on January 10, 2025 – it was the first heart-liver-kidney transplant in New York City, and one of only a handful in the country with a repeat heart transplant. Such cases are extremely rare.
The extraordinarily high-risk and complex 22-hour operation was led by Anelechi Anyanwu, MD, Vice Chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, and Sander S. Florman, MD, the Charles Miller, MD Professor of Surgery and Director of the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai.
Drs. Anyanwu and Florman also led the second heart-liver-kidney transplant in March of this year.
“The coordination between our abdominal and thoracic medical and surgical teams was seamless—and the anesthesia expertise required to perform these transplants was critical,” says Dr. Florman. “An amazing tour de force for this patient!”
Adds Noah Moss, MD, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at Mount Sinai who has cared for the patient for nearly a decade. ““It is incredible to see how much better our patient feels and looks in a short period of time. He describes that his activities of daily living are much easier to perform and he has returned to work where he volunteers for his community, and is already planning his next family vacation.”
After a few months of recovery, Mack is back at home and says he’s feeling better than ever.
He just celebrated his 64th birthday, he’s exercising every day, and he’s back at work as a CPR instructor with his town’s ambulance corps. Godbee is also planning a trip to visit some of his grandkids in Florida and celebrate his new chance at life with them.
His story stresses the importance of knowing CPR — something that saved his life and allowed him to get this rare triple transplant.
He hopes others learn from his story and that it can save someone else’s life as well.
