Parmjit Singh is younger at heart than the rest of his 53-year-old body.

A new heart beats in the chest of the Oak Harbor restaurant owner, the result of a freak accident.

Singh’s medical misadventures started about 18 months ago.

He had worked all day in Henderson’s Restaurant, the business he purchased five years ago. A severe back pain prompted him to drive to Whidbey General Hospital for a checkup. Doctors sent him to Everett, where specialists detected two blocked arteries and he was rapidly scheduled for bypass surgery. After the bypass, a surgeon inserted a diagnostic tool into his chest, he said.

“It burned the right side of my heart,” Singh said.

His heart stopped. A similar malfunction killed a man in Japan after bypass surgery in 1996, he said.

That was not to be Singh’s fate.

For the next three months he lay in a coma at the University of Washington hospital. He was connected to a life support machine while surgeons searched for a compatible replacement heart.

On Dec. 28, 2004, he underwent a heart transplant.

“I do not know anything about the donor. I was only told I had a young and healthy heart,” he said.

Singh doesn’t recall anything from the three months he lay unconscious. Singh said the Everett hospital blamed manufacturers of the equipment that had destroyed his heart, and they in turn blamed medical staff. Somehow the liability was resolved and the $2-million cost of the transplant was covered. This was fortunate because Singh lacked medical insurance at the time.

He bears no animosity toward anyone for his medical travails.

“I thank the donor, the doctors, my family and everyone who helped me through this,” he said. “Thanks to God, I’m in America where there are good doctors and care, and where they all treat me like a king.”

Singh arrived in the United States in 1982 from India. He said a heart transplant wouldn’t have been available in his homeland.

He grew up on a small farm in Punjab state, a part of northern India so named because five rivers travel though fertile farmland. He joined the Indian army for a while. Then he joined Greek and German merchant marine services in 1974 to earn some money and see the world. For about seven years he traveled the globe.

When he emigrated Singh entered the U.S. in New York and spent a decade working in East Coast restaurants.

In fact, it seems to Singh that he spent all his life working in the food business. So it naturally followed that when an opportunity opened up to buy Truck City, a café and fuel station in Mount Vernon, and move closer to relatives in British Columbia, he didn’t pass up the chance.

A gregarious man, he hasn’t met a stranger. He likes to chat with everyone he meets. He was visiting Oak Harbor five years ago when he dropped in at Henderson’s Restaurant on Pioneer Way.

Patty and Harry Henderson, and his mother Catherine Henderson, had operated the restaurant almost 30 years and were getting ready to sell.

The Hendersons were impressed with Singh’s credentials and sold him the restaurant.

Patty Henderson sympathizes with the Singh family for all the travails they have survived. He and wife Harmeed Kaur have three children still living at home, and he has one child from an earlier marriage.

Patty Henderson likes to tease Singh. She asked him how he managed to acquire such a pretty wife. Quick off the mark, he replied it was because he’s such a good looking man, she said.

The Singhs epitomize the pioneer spirit that helped make America great. Patty Henderson said they are hard-working, family-oriented people, who don’t give up during hard times.

“They have had more than their share of troubles,” she said.

Henderson is pleased with the improvements Singh made to the building. He recently added a beer garden, enlarged the cocktail lounge and redecorated the restaurant. He retained the typical American fare for which the restaurant is known, but recently added a taste of India, with a range of curries and other dishes now on the menu.

“There’s been a good response to the Indian food,” he said.

Singh recently returned to work, but can only pull very light duty. His health may never be the same. He visits doctors monthly and takes 30 tables four times a day. These are strategies to ensure his body will not try to reject his new heart.

Singh wears a turban and matching shirt to work. This is a signature of his religion. He is a Sikh, a religious belief held by about 2 percent of people living in India.

But local people are sometimes confused by the turban.

No. He is not Muslim. That’s a different religion entirely. When questioned by curious people, Singh said he is comfortable explaining that not all people wearing turbans are from the same religious background.

Singh recognizes his life has changed and limitations could continue on his activities, but he isn’t too worried.

“I am happy where I am now,” he said. “I’ve got a second chance. God gave me a second life.”