MILWAUKEE - If your heart stops, seconds count, but before help arrives, strangers may have to save your life. Would you help? Many people in Wisconsin don't want to get involved. First responders in Milwaukee County do a great job of saving lives, but more people would make it if bystanders would jump in and start CPR. Mark Scholl remembers the day he nearly died. It was just a normal work day at Sam's Club in Franklin when Mark's heart stopped. "Went to the break room, and I sat down and passed out," Scholl said. Co-workers started CPR. They weren't exactly sure what to do, but jumped in anyway. "Not exactly knowing what I was doing but the sooner the better and don't stop," Sam Dial said. Scholl made it, but many people in Milwaukee County don't. The irony here: our first responders are some of the best in the country. A recent study of ten regional systems put Milwaukee County's EMS near the top. Milwaukee Fire Department's Med 5 is the busiest in the state. They save lives every day. Our survival rate for a common type of cardiac arrest is 25 percent. While that's good, we discovered other metropolitan areas doing much better. Seattle has a survival rate of 45 percent. "The sooner someone actually starts compressions, even if they're not as good as what we would deliver, it's actually squeezing blood to the brain," says Milwaukee firefighter/paramedic Lieutenant Michael Wright. CPR is key. In Seattle half of bystanders jumped in to help, one of the reasons that city's survival rate is so high. "Once they arrive at the hospital they have a much higher chance of leaving that hospital not only alive but neurologically intact," Froedtert Hospital's Dr. Tom Aufderheide said. So what about here in Wisconsin? If you saw a stranger drop to the ground, unconscious and not breathing, would you jump in and help? Something is better than nothing when it comes to CPR. In the Racine area, the cardiac arrest survival rate on EMS calls averages just 15 percent. Here's what's alarming: out of the 64 people that witnessed a person collapse in 2007, just 15 tried CPR. "With less than four minute response times that's still a critical time element that there's nothing being done," Division Chief Jay Wuerker said. Angie Scott and her co-workers at Sam's Club weren't confident in their CPR skills, but they jumped in anyway. "I don't know why but it clicked. Everything just came back to me, so I started to do mouth to mouth," Scott said. Scholl is now back at work and getting better. "Everybody says 'oh you gotta have a guardian angel.' I say 'ya, I've got three of them,'" Scholl said. When it comes to saving a life, you can't always rely on the experts. You may have to rely on the kindness of strangers. In Wisconsin, the city of Kenosha is setting the standard. Forty percent of the time bystanders performed CPR. Seattle has the best survival rate in the nation at 45 percent. Boston is at 40 percent. In the Midwest, Minneapolis is close to Milwaukee County which is a 25 percent survival rate. One CPR note: a lot of people shy away from helping because they're afraid. CPR is now being taught using only compressions, meaning mouth to mouth is no longer part of the equation.