Tracey Conway

Tracey Conway (born August 27, 1956) is a Writer/Performer and was a regular cast member on KING-TV's "Almost Live!", a Seattle-based sketch comedy show, from 1984 to 1999. Tracey came to the attention of the Almost Live! creative team while temping in the HR department of KING television as she pursued her theater acting career. Tracey joined the show full-time the fall of 1990 following her first appearance as the witness-on-the-street in Almost Live!’s infamous April Fool’s Day sketch-joke of The Space Needle Collapse. In 1992, just prior to the show starting its two year run on the Comedy Central network, Tracey won the northwest regional Emmy award for Best Talent.
January 21st, 1995, at the close of a live taping of Almost Live!, Tracey‘s heart went into the potentially fatal arrhythmia Ventricular Fibrillation and she collapsed from Sudden Cardiac Arrest on the set of the show. At first, the audience thought they were being punked because the cast had done a sketch spoofing ER during the show. Fellow cast members knew this was not a planned/staged stuntfall. As Tracey‘s skin began to turn blue-gray show host John Keister turned to the audience urgently asking for anyone with medical training. There was no doctor, nurse or first responder in the audience, however a volunteer firefighter, Glen MacLellan stood up and suggested Tracey might be having heart problems. He ran down and begin administering CPR while a number of people in the audience and on the crew called 911. With the assistance of another audience member, Kurt Lyson, MacLellan continued CPR until the team of firefighters arrived and took over. They administered Tracey‘s first two defibrillator shocks and then a Medic One paramedic team arrived and continued life-saving efforts, entubating her, providing cardiac drugs and shocking her an additional four times with the defibrillator. After almost 20 minutes, following the sixth defibrillator shock, Tracey‘s heart converted out of V-Fib and begin to beat on its own. She was transported by Medic One to Harborview Medical Center the sole level one emergency hospital in the Northwest and was treated in the emergency cardiac care unit for four days. Following multiple tests that determined her cardiac arrest was idiopathic, she was transferred to Harborview’s sister hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center, where an ICD (internal cardioverter defibrillator), was implanted in her chest.
Two weeks after Tracey‘s collapse on the set of Almost Live!, she was back on set delivering a line during the live taping. She continued to be a full-time cast member and writer for the remainder of Almost Live!’s 15-year run.
Biography.
Conway earned a BFA (Theater Arts) from the University of New Mexico and a MFA (Drama) from the University of Southern California. Conway was one of the main female performers on "Almost Live!". Her recurring characters included the eponymous character in "The Worst Girlfriend in the World". In 1995, after taping an episode of "Almost Live!", Conway collapsed on the set and was in full cardiac arrest. A police officer named Kurt Lysen, who was in the audience at the time, performed CPR until paramedics from Seattle Fire Department arrived and provided advanced life support. She now has an ICD. Conway's speaking engagements include this experience and CPR/AED training.