By Patrick Robinson

Zach Broten, a personal trainer and inspirational figure for many people in West Seattle passed away July 22 from cardiac arrest.

He was only three days away from his 31st birthday.

He is survived by his wife Celeste and five year old daughter. 

In May of 2021, I had the opportunity to interview Zach at West Seattle Health Club where he worked and he recounted the story of his near death experience.

That story is linked here.

The audio version is here.

But in short he told me he had grown up as an angry kid. He was in trouble a lot and found that body building helped channel his restless energy. He met his wife at the gym. Then he had fallen ill in 2013 and after some denial, went for help. 

They found he was very sick and put him in a medically induced coma. But he died. In fact they declared him so and his family came into the room, stricken with grief. Then inexplicably his heart came back to life seemingly on its own. But he remained in a coma. He was put on feeding tubes and kept alive but he became emaciated. While in the coma he had some remarkable, nonsensical dreams he told me, but then three extremely real ones. He believed he saw Hell and the devil, then his own father but a version that was clearly God, then finally a prophetic dream about a baby girl being born. That dream came true in spectacular fashion some time later when Crystallina (Nina) was born. 

Zach emerged from the experience incredibly thin, weak and with little stamina. That didn't phase him. He began a body rebuilding effort and would regularly post photos of his progress on social media as his dream of being a competitive body builder slowly began to happen.

He was continuing his personal training work with clients and loved seeing people progress and achieve their own goals. He had managed to change himself from an angry kid with little purpose into a goal driven man with love enough for his wife, his young daughter and everyone who encountered him.

Even though it was tragically short, his was a life well lived. He was an example of how belief in yourself is what makes life worthwhile. 

A GoFundMe page has been set up and while it has reached the short term goal of $10,000 quickly, a testament to how many lives Zach touched, his wife and child will still need support.