Local restaurant leader bounces back after heart attack

Published 6:15 am Sunday, August 3, 2025

At 44, Victoria’s Texas Roadhouse Managing Partner Alban Lunsford felt invincible. With two college aged kids, a thriving business and a great social life, Lunsford’s future looked bright. But a heart attack nearly took all of that away.

“You always think you’re young and vibrant, you’re always hungry to do more, but your body is not always as healthy as your brain,” Lunsford said. “Man, I wish I hadn’t been so gluttonous, enjoying these big meals all the time. I didn’t need 10 wings. I could have had five of them instead. I could have gotten water instead of a soda. I think about all those little choices now.”

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and Lunsford was out playing a round of golf. He felt great up until the last hole when he noticed a tightness in his left arm that kept getting tighter and tighter. He didn’t have any trouble breathing, but he still cut his game short and headed home to take a shower. Lunsford became hotter and the tightness spread from his arm up to his neck.

“I started to feel really uncomfortable,” Lunsford said. “I took some baby Tylenol and drank two bottles of water, but I felt like I was going to vomit. That’s when I started to think that something might have been really wrong.”

He was originally going to try to sleep it off. but his dogs seemed too hypersensitive, licking his face and running around the bedroom.

“I thought maybe there was something to it, so I forced myself to go to my truck and drove myself to the emergency room,” Lunsford said. “It didn’t feel like a big deal, but 10 years ago I was diagnosed with bradycardia.”

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While he was reluctant to go to the hospital, he remembered his doctor’s advice: “Anytime you have chest pains, don’t ignore it. It’s better to come in than to not.” In the past, his chest pain had been chalked up to stress or anxiety. But this time it wasn’t.

Around 15 minutes from the time he left the golf course to the time he walked into the ER at Citizens Medical Center, his hand had begun to shake. In the blink of an eye, Lunsford received chest X-rays and doctors prepped to place a stint in his heart. Before he went any further, he texted his wife, who was off at Splashway Waterpark with their kids, enjoying one last hurrah before college with some friends.

“I was sitting there and thinking, ‘I hope they make it and nothing’s wrong. I don’t want to die here,'” Lunsford said.

After that, his whole body began to shake and time became an illusion. He remembers the nurse talking to his wife on the phone. He remembers getting tests run on him and getting fluids.

“They were telling me to keep my eyes open but I felt good. I felt like everything was under control, I was so relaxed,” Lunsford said. “I was just gonna close my eyes until they wheeled me back for surgery.”

When Lunsford closed his eyes, he went into cardiac arrest and flatlined.

“It felt like I was laying in my bed at home and the sun was coming through,” Lunsford said. “The whole area around me was white and it was nice and cool.”

To him, it felt like only 15 seconds had passed. To the team of doctors and nurses who gave him chest compressions and oxygen, it was a long 30 minutes. Within that time, medical staff brought Lunsford’s heart rate back down for five minutes before he went into cardiac arrest again.

“There was a nurse on top me giving me compressions and another one had the oxygen on me,” Lunsford said. “They had to use the defibrillator on me to get me back both times.”

In and out of conscious and toeing the line between life and death, all Lunsford could think about was his wife and kids.

“I was like, ‘man, I hope this is really nothing, which is crazy because I was already dead for a little bit,'” Lunsford said.

Doctors revived Lunsford with defibrillation and rushed him to the cardiac catheterization lab where they cleared his blocked artery. He had almost a 100% blockage, which was the cause of his heart attack.

“Had he waited just a little longer or gone somewhere without this level of emergency cardiac care, the outcome could have been very different,” Dr. AbuSara, Interventional Cardiologist and Cardiovascular Program Medical Director at Citizens Medical Center, said. “We’re proud to have the technology and team in place to respond immediately when seconds count.”

Lunsford is relatively young, so to have a heart attack at his age surprised him.

“I’m not a smoker, I stay pretty active with my job at the restaurant and I was social drinker,” Lunsford said. “It was my poor diet that did me in.”

The Lunsford family enjoys eating out, grabbing juicy cheeseburgers and deep fried chicken nuggets while sipping sugary carbonated drinks and indulging in sweets.

“We’re just not responsible eaters. I grew up in a poor family, so I value getting to go out and eat,” Lunsford said.

Coming back from the dead was apparently the wakeup call Lunsford needed to make significant lifestyle changes; not just for himself but his family as well. He cut back the seasonings and the ribeye steaks, he began reaching for fruits and veggies instead of chips and candies and stopped drinking alcohol.

It wasn’t long before he noticed a difference. In the two weeks since he’s changed his diet and turned his health around. Lunsford has lost 35 pounds and has more energy to keep up with his kids and his business.

“I always had an excuse to just go with whatever was quick and easy, to just grab a burger from somewhere, to get a soda to stop at a drive through,” Lunsford said. “People don’t make a lot of time for their health; I didn’t. You get so caught up in things, trying to find more time for other things but ultimately if you want more time, you have to pay attention to what you’re eating.”

Together as a family, Lunsford, his wife, Melissa, and his two children are self-educating and are consciously making healthier options in their day to day lives.

“Health is a single-person journey. But when you have people around you that love and care about you, it’s important to take care of yourself and be there for all the experiences that are yet to come,” Lunsford said. “Every day you make an impact in someone’s life. I have a second chance now to be grateful for those moments, and I am so happy to still be here.”

After having his heart attack the first week of July, Lunsford is already back at work, keeping up with the fast pace of the restaurant business. He is also ready to move his kids into college this fall.

Madison O’Hara is a news reporter for the Victoria Advocate. She can be reached at madison.ohara@vicad.com.