Young heart attack survivor raises awareness, funds for American Heart Association nonprofit

CEDAR RAPIDS — She woke up with sharp, throbbing back pain between her shoulder blades.

Maybe it’s a muscle spasm, Katie Hopkins thought as it awoke her one early morning in August 2023. Something that could be cleared up with a simple shot.

But something else conveyed the urgency to her gut instinct — perhaps the shortness of breath, perhaps the intensity of the pain.

Like many, her first instinct is to Google the symptoms: “throbbing upper back pain in women.” At the bottom of the list — almost a foot note in the search engine’s suggestions — was the possibility of a heart attack.

“There’s no way I’m having a heart attack,” Hopkins thought. “I’m 36.”

Her husband drove her to the emergency room as a precaution, where intake nurses got her in immediately.

The first EKG came back normal. But minutes later, symptoms intensified. There, she felt a wave of heat and anxiety surge through her body as she started profusely dripping in sweat. The doctor ran the test a second time.

The worst was confirmed: a heart attack.

“I looked at my husband like, ‘Is this really happening right now?’ ” she said. “He had sheer panic on his face.”

She conveyed her love to her husband and passed out in cardiac arrest. As she coded, nurses and doctors spent 20 minutes resuscitating her.

“They typically don’t do CPR that long, but given my age, they didn’t want to give up,” Hopkins told The Gazette.

Katie Hopkins sits with her daughter Charlotte, age 2, at the Hopkin’s home in Cedar Rapids Iowa on Wednesday, February 5, 2025. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)

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Charlotte, 2, (from left) Katie, Josh, and Weston, 6, eat dinner at the Hopkins’ home in Cedar Rapids on Feb. 5, 2025. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)

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She got into a catheterization lab for a stent and coded before a peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line, could be installed. As she was transferred to the University of Iowa for care, she started to stabilize.

She woke up days later, delirious. Doctors estimated a two-week hospital stay, but she was discharged only six days after her torn coronary artery was discovered — a condition that causes blood clots.

Her survival rate was 10 percent.

“The doctors considered me a medical miracle,” she said. “I knew I was going to live, but it was still a long road of recovery ahead.”

Know the symptoms

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At a young age, the Cedar Rapids native survived the No. 1 killer of women. In 2021, heart disease killed more than 310,000 American women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The average age of a woman’s first heart attack is 72. But researchers are alarmed to see the rate of heart attacks increasing in adults age 35 to 54 — especially in women.

Many are simply unaware of the symptoms, which can vary from the symptoms widely known for men. While heart attacks in men often manifest through left arm and chest pain, symptoms in women can be a radiating type of pain in the back.

It can be an uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of the chest that goes away and comes back. it can be pain or discomfort in the arms, back, neck, jaw or stomach.

Shortness of breath, another symptom, can come without any other discomfort. Watch out for cold sweats, nausea and light-headedness, too.

Hopkins, a mother of two young children, was not a drinker or a smoker. She got her walks in and stayed active, with no other health conditions that would have made her susceptible.

She hopes others take away one message from her story: don’t dismiss your symptoms.

“It can happen to you at a young age. If I hadn’t had Google, I probably would’ve let it go and my husband would have come home to me dead on the floor,” she said. “Me listening to my body that day, and to Google, saved my life.”

Raising awareness and helping others

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After six weeks off work and three months of cardiac rehabilitation, Hopkins’ life returned to normal with some lifestyle adjustments — less sodium, watching her food intake and monitoring symptoms closely.

Small symptoms — especially pain in her back — make her worry more than she used to. But with a 6-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, she tries not to sweat the small stuff anymore in life.

“Not every day is a guarantee,” she said.

Now, the 2025 Woman of Impact nominee for Go Red for Women wants to pay forward the things that ensured her recovery.

The nonprofit, created 21 years ago by the American Heart Association to promote education on heart health in women, will host a “Laugh Your Heart Out” fundraiser Feb. 15 in Fairfax.

And starting Feb. 9, Hopkins will embark on a nine-week campaign to raise $21,000 for Go Red for Women.

“I was supported a lot after my heart attack, monetarily, physically and emotionally. Now that I’m better, I want to be able to do that for somebody else, whether I know them or not,” Hopkins said. “If I can save another mom, sister, aunt, whoever it may be, I want to do that.”

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.