It was a terrifying day in 2021 when Long Island dad John Cosides couldn’t stop his little boy from choking on chicken nuggets in their Massapequa home.
“You can see it immediately in his face, the panic when he couldn’t breathe,” Cosides told The Post of his then 2-year-old Eibhear.
As the whole family sprang into action, unsuccessfully trying to dislodge the food, the dad ran to grab an easy-to-use, locally made anti-choking device called LifeVac, which, in seconds, was able to open the little boy’s airway with a simple push and pull.
“It’s kind of cheesy, but every day is a blessing now,” the dad said. “We only give LifeVacs as gifts for baby showers now…I was actually just talking about it twice last week.”
Eibhear’s miracle is one of almost 5,000 that the simple but revolutionary device has been credited with, which proudly hang inside the “Wall of Saves” inside the LifeVac Suffolk County HQ, which displays pictures and stories behind the 4,700-plus people who lived worldwide.
What began as just a few dozen photos evolved into a facility that required its ceiling to be raised to accommodate more photos — and new ones have to be draped down from the rafters due to a lack of space.
“A difference of four minutes, and this place would be a memorial instead,” LiveVac founder Art Lih told The Post.
“When I come in here, it’s like a cathedral…God put me on this mission and I’m not going to the ground until we finish it.”
Like loved ones of choking victims, Lih all too well knows the pain of lives cut short. While driving with his pair of closest companions in his early 20s, Lih crashed and was the sole survivor.
“I accidentally killed my two best friends — that pain is still here,” he said. “I think of them dying in my arms, and all these people who could have died right in front of their parents.”
It all began when the fellow Massapequan handmade a prototype in his garage a little over a decade ago as a labor of love rather than profit.
“We’re talking electrical tape, gorilla glue, a mask, and a plunger from Home Depot. That’s it,” Lih said of the first iteration that still works.
While retail models, $69.95, have since become more sophisticated than Lih’s garage invention, the premise remains the same. Anybody can use the LifeVac without training, as the mask creates a suction seal over a choking victim’s mouth and pulls out the blockage instantly.
“We can get real close to [no more choking deaths] — and that’s never been done,” the entrepreneur claimed.
Lih, now 60, was at a crossroads in life when he began his Nesconset-based company. He has just sold off his transportation business for a very handsome amount, when an experience at a hospital rocked the man to his core.
The father of a 7-year-old daughter at the time was told that a small child had recently died of a choking incident on a gurney he was standing near, despite a team of medical workers rushing to save him.
Putting himself in those parents’ shoes, thinking back to his own past and survivors’ guilt, Lih knew right away retirement wasn’t an option.
“The angel on my shoulder was like, ‘What are you even thinking about?’”
Like that, the LifeVac was born.
Doesn’t suck to suck
Things weren’t easy when Lih got things going officially in 2014; his company wasn’t credited with saving a single life in the first two years and only saved four in 2016.
Nevertheless, Lih persisted — even when Shark Tank investors rejected him soon after.
“In the end, it was a good thing because I would not have been interested in doing the business their way,” he said.
The product also struggled to attract large-scale manufacturers, as Lih, guided by his good-hearted engineer father, intentionally designed the LifeVac to last a lifetime per unit.
“They want to sell you a new one every year,” Lih said, adding that LiveVac customers get free replacements after use. “But my dad’s values were more important than their money values.”
Trusting his instinct and believing a higher power was watching over on the righteous mission, he saw life-saving numbers grow exponentially: 153 in 2021, 357 in 2022, 1,011 in 2023, 1,719 in 2024, and so on to 1,323 saved this year — and counting.
Of the LifeVac’s use, over 3,000 kids have survived a choking incident on food, leaves, and toy parts, Lih said.
“Those are just the numbers reported back to us,” he added. “The true numbers are probably double, maybe triple…we just saved 10 lives yesterday.”
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