ST. LOUIS – It was a brush with death outside Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.

A security officer was run down while protecting the campus. Doctors told his family he wouldn’t survive but four years later, after serving his country and now surviving the unthinkable, he shares his story of survival.

“I was given an 80% chance to not even wake up from the coma and if I did, I’d basically be a vegetable for the rest of my life,” Robert Schwartzman said.

Schwartzman went to investigate a suspicious car. Moments later, he was run over and left clinging to life.

“I went out there and when I caught up with them, I got in front of the car. He went forward, put me on the hood, and ran over my feet,” Schwartzman said. “I pulled out my revolver when I was on the hood and that’s when I shot him.”
   
The suspect was shot and killed. 

Doctors didn’t think Schwartzman would survive either, as part of his skull had to be removed, and he spent weeks in a coma. But Rob, a Marine veteran, relied on the discipline he learned in the service and the love of his family to pull through.

“Well, there’s one thing for sure. They never worked on the Marine before. And then also I went from that to wheelchair to walker to cane to nothing,” Schwartzman said.
 
Four years later, the scars remain. Rob still battles memory issues and goes through therapy. But he says every small step forward is proof that miracles can happen.

And through the pain, he still tries to keep a sense of humor.
   
“When the first time that they even told me that they had to take out my skull, my skull was actually still in St Louis and I was up in Chicago at the time,” Schwartzman said. “I was like, ‘Well, darn it.’ Not everyone can say there are literally two places at once.”
 
For Rob, the focus isn’t on the suspect; it’s on the second chance he was never supposed to have. 

A marine. A father. And now, a survivor. Three years after his brush with death, Rob Schwartzman Jr. says his story is about resilience, faith and family—the things that gave him the strength to keep going.