It’s a breath of fresh air.
A Long Island entrepreneur who claims he’s doing God’s work has saved over 5,000 lives with his revolutionary LifeVac anti-choking device — and won over Dr. Ben Carson in the process.
“Every place that serves food or has people eating in it should have this readily available — and all their staff should be trained,” Carson told The Post.
“There shouldn’t be any lives lost for this reason anymore.”
The easy-to-use suction device that seals over a person’s mouth to remove airway blockages started as a sink plunger and glue in the garage of Massapequa man Art Lih more than a decade ago.
Late last year it surpassed the major milestone of preventing 5,000 choking deaths.
“We had saves in six countries in one day recently,” said Lih. “I think we can hit 10,000 saves this year.”
A deep breath
Lih, 61, runs his Nesconset-based business as a labor of love, including holding onto photos for each person who survived a choking to death thanks to his life-saving device.
He also offers a free contraption to every school across the US — it’s saved over 3,000 kids — plus a complimentary replacement to any customer who needs one.
LifeVac’s team successfully lobbied for Texas to pass a law mandating airway-clearance devices in schools in the Lone Star State last June, as well.
It’s much simpler than the Heimlich Maneuver, which requires necessary training, Lih said.
“This is something that is so simple that a child could do it,” Carson said about the LifeVac.
And they have.
“He taught my children how to use it,” mom Jennifer Glenn said of the device that was “collecting dust at our house up until that point.”
The CEO personally visits many who’ve been saved, such as the Glenn family of Cedar Hill, Texas, after they used a LifeVac to yank out candy from their little boy Quade’s airway a few years ago.
“He even had my children practice it on him.”
Lucky they did, as Quade again choked on watermelon some time later, and his big sister, Quincey, came to the rescue with the LifeVac.
“If it wasn’t for that, he wouldn’t be here,” said Quade’s dad, Blake, as Jennifer added, “I give it as baby shower gifts now.”
Lih had just sold off a successful transportation company and was ready for retirement around 2014 — when he heard a child tragically died from choking on a grape while in a hospital.
He said both a devil and an angel popped up on each of his shoulders.
The evil naysayer gave Lih a laundry list of reasons why investing in a heavily regulated business, in which he had no experience, was foolhardy — but then he said a higher power chimed in.
“I asked God for the answer and saw a shooting star fly by,” said Lih.
“After that, it didn’t matter. Once God told me I was on the right path, I had armor.”
Lih, who has carried years of survivor’s guilt for being behind the wheel in a fatal car crash that took his two best friends’ lives in his 20s, tirelessly got to work on the DIY design he brought to market.
“It was brutal for years and years. We saved zero lives in the first year,” said Lih, who added that the LifeVac only rescued four people by 2016, while “Shark Tank” investors swam away initially.
He finally saw validation for doing the Lord’s work between 2022 and 2023, when the annual number of saves soared from 357 to 1,011.
It climbed to 1,719 in 2024 and reached 5,000 and counting last November — months after Carson joined on as a national spokesperson.
The Trump administration’s national advisor to the Department of Agriculture was fed up with being victimized by phony AI impersonations using his likeness to endorse products for erectile dysfunction and pulmonary disease.
“I said then, I would like to represent something that is actually useful to people. Something that can actually make their lives better, or actually save their lives,” Carson said.
A mutual contact then told Carson about LifeVac.
“I said that would be perfect,” he said. “That is something that people don’t really know about, and yet when they learn about it, it makes perfectly good sense.”
“It’s really a matter of exposure,” added Carson, who is hoping to snowball the number of live-saving incidents to 10,000 by 2027.
The iconic pediatric neurosurgeon, who famously ran for president in 2016, spoke Friday at the company’s 5,000-save celebratory gala, where families of rescued loved ones could breathe easy.
He likened the device to the same common sense as having a fire extinguisher on hand.
“You have a lot of people in this country who are very inventive. Not many of them are fortunate enough to invent something that saves lives,” Carson said.
“Art Lih is a hero.”