A Southern Hills Hospital emergency nurse who helped save a stranger’s life at a Golden Knights game is being honored for her actions.

Zuzana “Susie” Macis was named the Compassionate Care recipient of HCA Healthcare’s Excellence in Nursing Award, part of the company’s 2026 Awards of Distinction, the hospital said Tuesday.

Macis performed CPR for nearly 10 minutes, until paramedics arrived, after Jeannie Cunningham went into cardiac arrest in December at T-Mobile Arena, according to the hospital. The two have since become close friends, it said.

Dr. Paul Wilkes, a Southern Hills OB-GYN, was named a finalist for HCA Healthcare’s Frist Humanitarian Award.

HCA Healthcare describes the Awards of Distinction as its top honors for colleagues, physicians and volunteers. The Frist Humanitarian Award honors exceptional service to others. The Excellence in Nursing Award honors outstanding nurses.

The emergency began when Macis’ husband noticed a woman had collapsed on a stairway at the arena and alerted Macis.

“I didn’t think twice. I just jumped up,” Macis said in a video provided by the hospital.

Macis checked the woman for a pulse. When she couldn’t find one, she started CPR.

That quick action saved Cunningham’s life, said Claudia Correa-Martinez, a nursing colleague at the hospital. CPR must start immediately for a patient to have any chance of survival, she said.

“There is something about emergency room nurses,” Correa-Martinez said. “We are always there, even when we aren’t in the emergency room, we are there.”

Cunningham found Macis through an online post several weeks after the game and thanked her, the hospital said. “I am so grateful she jumped in,” Cunningham said in the video.

“For me, compassion looks like caring for someone like you would your family. It is treating them like a human being,” Macis said.

Macis, a charge nurse in the emergency department, has worked at Southern Hills Hospital since 2007.

The hospital credited her leadership with helping the emergency department, including its freestanding emergency rooms, raise patient experience scores. Outside work, Macis is involved in animal rescue, the hospital said.

“What sets Susie apart is pretty much everything,” Correa-Martinez said. “She gets the positive out of everything and everyone. She starts the day with that positivity.”

The hospital said Wilkes has paid delivery costs for patients struggling financially, sits with grieving patients and has flown patients from overseas “to get care where it is safe.”

He also volunteers with nonprofits, including the Patrick Kelley Youth Foundation, the Jump for Joy Foundation and the Sight for Life Foundation, the hospital said.

“We are incredibly proud to celebrate Susie Macis and Dr. Wilkes for being named in two of HCA Healthcare’s highest honors,” Southern Hills Hospital CEO Nick Johnson said in a news release. “Their compassion is evident not only in the exceptional care they provide our patients, but in the way they step up for others when they are needed most.”