Buffalo Bills Owner's Wife Kim Pegula Suffered Cardiac Arrest & Collapsed Like Damar

💭 Months Before Hamlin’s Collapse, Bills’ Co-Owner Also Suffered Cardiac Arrest

In an essay, Jessica Pegula, a top-ranked tennis player, described the health ordeal of her mother, Kim Pegula, president of the Buffalo Bills. Hamlin, a defensive back, went into cardiac arrest at a Jan. 2 game.

Jessica Pegula, the professional tennis player, has revealed details for the first time about the health of her mother, Kim Pegula, a co-owner and president of the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres, describing how she went into cardiac arrest last year and is still struggling to recover.

In an essay published in The Players’ Tribune on Tuesday, Jessica Pegula said she was writing about it now because she wanted to be more open after Damar Hamlin, the Bills defensive back, went into cardiac arrest during a game on Jan. 2. He was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 11.

In her essay, titled “I Want to Talk to You About My Mom,” Pegula, 28, said that when she was at the Australian Open last month, she texted her husband about Mr. Hamlin’s ordeal. “The situation with my mom,” she wrote in the essay, “was weighing on me.”

“When can we start talking about it?” she wrote. “When can I tell her story, my story, my family’s story? Everyone just keeps asking me. I really need to get it off my chest.”

Kim Pegula, 53, and her husband, Terry, bought the Bills from the estate of the team’s founder, Ralph Wilson, in 2014. The couple paid $1.4 billion, then a record for an N.F.L. franchise.

Terry Pegula, a billionaire businessman, made his fortune primarily in natural gas and in real-estate development. The Pegulas bought the N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres in 2011, as Jessica was turning 17.

In 2022, the Pegulas acknowledged publicly that Kim had been facing significant health issues since the summer, without providing details.