Christmas Eve in Surrey
Christine grew up in Surrey in a close-knit family. In a community as diverse as Surrey, holiday traditions look different for every family. For Christine’s family, Christmas Eve meant gathering for evening mass before welcoming Christmas morning.
In 2012, that tradition took an unexpected turn.
“We went to our church for the 7 p.m. Christmas Eve mass,” she recalls. “Everything felt normal at first. But I remember my dad pacing around the church. He didn’t look well. He was pale and restless, and something just didn’t seem right.”
Believing he just needed a good night’s rest, the family returned home and settled in for the night.
A few hours later, the quiet rhythm of Christmas Eve shifted.
“At around three in the morning, my dad woke up with intense chest pain,” Christine says. “He couldn’t sleep. None of us really understood what was happening.”
He described his pain radiating down his arm with an incredible tightness in his chest. Almost as if a rubber band was about to snap at any moment.
Her older sister recognized the symptoms immediately.
A heart attack.
Christine remembers waking up to flashing lights outside the house and paramedics moving quickly through the living room.
“I was scared,” she says. “There were strangers in our house, machines everywhere, voices talking quickly. I didn’t understand everything that was happening, but I knew something was very wrong.”
The paramedics placed her father on a stretcher.
“I just remember crying,” she says. “He looked so pale. I was terrified. I didn’t know if I was going to see my dad again.”
As they wheeled him toward the door, he turned back to her.
“It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
The ambulance took him to Royal Columbian Hospital, where physicians placed a stent to treat his heart attack. At the time, Surrey Memorial Hospital did not yet have cardiac catheterization labs, meaning patients often had to be transferred across the Fraser River for urgent cardiac care.
Thanks to the care teams that saved her father, the family were able to celebrate Christmas together that year.
“The presents didn’t matter anymore,” Christine says. “What mattered was that he was okay. We could see him. We could hug him. We were just grateful he was still here.”
That night shaped how she wanted to show up for her city.
“I remember seeing all these people come together. The paramedics, nurses, doctors. All of them worked toward one single goal: saving my dad’s life.”
She never forgot it.
Following the Heart
Christine had always enjoyed science in school, but after that night she began thinking about her future differently.
“Seeing what those teams did for my dad made me want to be part of that,” she says. “I wanted to be someone who could help people in those moments.”
She went on to study Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, exploring where she could make the greatest impact. Eventually she enrolled in the cardiology program at BCIT, which trains technologists to work alongside physicians in diagnosing and treating heart disease.
“When I read about the program and the work happening in cardiac catheterization labs, it immediately connected back to my dad’s experience,” she says. “That’s where his life was saved.”
The decision felt immediately clear.
“That’s when I thought: ‘this is where I belong’.”
Her training began in diagnostic cardiology, performing ECGs, running treadmill stress tests and monitoring heart rhythms through Holter monitors (a device recording the heart’s rhythm).
Her first practicum placement brought her close to home.
“It was at Surrey Memorial Hospital, less than ten minutes from where I grew up,” she says. “Being able to train in the community I grew up in, felt really meaningful.”
At the time, however, invasive cardiac procedures weren’t performed there. To pursue cardiac catheterization, she completed her training at Royal Columbian Hospital.
Bringing Heart Care Home
One day, while working at Royal Columbian Hospital, Christine saw a job posting on the Fraser Health Careers website.
Cardiac Catheterization Technologist at Surrey Memorial Hospital.
“No question, I immediately applied to the position. This was my home, and I wanted to make a difference for people in this city. For my neighbours, my friends, my family.”
With the opening of Surrey Memorial Hospital’s cardiac catheterization, she joined the team as a Cardiac Catheterization Technologist. Now, patients in Surrey no longer need to cross the bridge for life-saving cardiac procedures.
The care happens here.
“It’s such a good feeling,” she says. “This is a brand-new service for our community, and you can already see how much it means to the families living here to be closer to home.”
Inside the cath lab, Christine works behind the glass, monitoring critical data throughout each procedure and supporting physicians as they restore blood flow to the heart.
But she never forgets what it feels like on the other side.
“I was that daughter once,” she says. “Scared. Vulnerable. Not knowing what was going to happen.”
Now she stands as part of the team families depend on in those moments.
“We want to be there for patients like my dad,” she says. “For those emergency situations, I hope I can help provide comfort to families who feel the same fear I did.”
