Jessica Pegula had recently cracked the top 10 in the women’s tennis world rankings when she got a harrowing phone call that her mother, Kim, had suffered cardiac arrest.
The incident occurred in June 2022, and the tennis star decided to write about what happened in The Players Tribune in the wake of the Damar Hamlin emergency, where the Bills safety suffered cardiac arrest on the field in a game against the Bengals after making a seemingly routine tackle on wideout Tee Higgins.
“A few days after I got home, I got a call around midnight (on my mom’s birthday) from my sister Kelly who was staying at my parents’ house,” she wrote. “Something was wrong with our mom, and she was headed to the hospital in an ambulance. My mom was asleep when my dad woke up to her going into cardiac arrest and she was unresponsive for quite a while. My sister gave her CPR until the ambulance arrived. She saved her life. Even though she doesn’t like to take credit for this terrible situation, she absolutely saved her life, followed by the critical job performed by the paramedics who arrived and were able to restore a heartbeat.”
Bills owner Kim Pegula before a game in 2021. Getty Images
Jessica Pegula during an Australian Open match on Jan. 24, 2023. REUTERS
Pegula’s parents, Terry and Kim, are the owners of the Buffalo Bills and Sabres. Kim’s cardiac arrest was initially announced as unspecified “unexpected health issues.”
The family anxiously awaited the news on whether Kim suffered brain damage as a result of her cardiac arrest.
“We lived in that hospital for basically two weeks,” Jessica wrote. “We took shifts, we brought each other food, we knew all the nurses and doctors, we even knew their schedules. We had to force my dad to go home and sleep, but most of the time he didn’t. He would go sit in his car to get away or come to my house. He didn’t want to go back to their house unless my mom was back with him. When they say one day in the hospital equals a week to recover, that is no joke. We were all mentally and physically exhausted.”
Kim, Jessica and Kelly Pegula at a Sabres game. NHLI via Getty Images
The daughter competed in Wimbledon with a heavy heart, as her mother continued to make slow but steady progress. In November, Jessica won her first WTA 1000 tournament at the Guadalajara Open in Mexico.
She wrote that the Hamlin situation felt like a “full circle” moment for her.
“Going into the 2023 Australian Open, I decided to wear the number 3 patch to honor Damar Hamlin,” she wrote. “Ironically, yes, I was ranked No. 3 in the world. However, it didn’t feel like it was just for him, it felt like it was for my mom as well. To see the attention it garnered in Australia, across the world, in a different country, just reminded me why I love sports and the beauty of coming together. Some of my close friends who know every detail of what has happened tell me, ‘I don’t know how you have made it through the year, let alone finished No. 3 in the world.’ I just say I have no freaking clue. I guess one thing I learned from the past year is it can be a great year, and a bad year, both can be true.”