Jon Wes Adams grew up feeling like he needed a hand to get through life. "I was born a twin," he jokes, "because God knew that I would need a lot of help."  Gardner Adams – age 27 like his brother, but older by five minutes – shares that humble perspective. From working on class projects to playing football, basketball and baseball together, the two who both now work as instructors and coaches at the same alternative middle and high school in Lexington, Kentucky, "always knew that two heads were better than one," he tells PEOPLE.  Turns out, it also took the two of them to help solve a medical mystery that may have saved them both.  Jon Wes and Gardner are identical twins – so much so that when they played sports, "the only way our coach could tell us apart was by looking at our backside," says Gardner. "My lower area, being my legs and butt, are bigger than his. That was a trick my mom told him."  But on a June 2014 run at a Lexington arboretum near his home, Jon Wes was alone without his brother when he collapsed. Had he been running in his usual direction, he would have blacked out in a spot far from any other people. By going the other way, however, he literally crashed into a concert crowd.  "The bystanders said I came running in like a linebacker," says Jon Wes, who doesn't remember the incident. "I took out three or four chairs. The band stopped playing immediately. That day there were about 150 to 200 people at the concert, which is a lot. Usually they have about 25-50 people. Faith is a really important part of my life and my family, and God intervened; when I collapsed there were two doctors there, and two nurses."  He was given CPR and mouth-to-mouth for about 20 minutes until paramedics arrived and shocked his heart back to normal. "It was cardiac arrest," he says. "My heart stopped beating."  Jon Wes spent a week at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Doctors there were unable to say what had caused it, but before Jon Wes was discharged, Dr. Samy-Claude Elayi fitted him under the left pectoral muscle with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator, or ICD, as a precaution to monitor his heart's rhythm. (The twins' mother, a nurse, "wasn't going to let him leave without one," recalls Gardner.)  What doctors would later diagnose – a hard-to-predict, often inherited disorder called  – was not then apparent to anyone.  The syndrome, an "electrical problem of the heart," as Dr. Elayi describes it, knocks the organ into overdrive, causing it to race up to 400 beats per minute, so fast that it interrupts the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. "That's a rhythm that is deadly within one or two minutes," he says. "He was really lucky CPR was performed right away. He's a miracle. Most of these patients, unfortunately, the first time it really happens is when they just drop dead. That's why it's such a difficult disease to diagnose."  Indeed, in the initial tests on Jon Wes, "there was no pattern like this," the doctor says. "We didn't see it."  Enter Jon Wes' twin brother.  "We really wanted to get to the bottom of this," says Dr. Elayi. Having the benefit of siblings with identical DNA, the hospital ordered genetic tests on the pair – and Gardner's results, which revealed the gene mutation suspected of causing Brugada, led Jon Wes' condition to be discovered.  That raised a question: Was Gardner at risk, too?  He showed no symptoms, but neither had Jon Wes. Should Gardner get an implant as well?  "There is no guideline that tells you what to do," says Dr. Elayi. "My thinking was, Gardner and Jon Wes have exactly the same genes. They are identical twins. From there, we thought the same genes may mean the same outcome."  Says Gardner: "That's pretty scary. If you read about it, it'll freak you out a little bit. I was like, 'God's protected me this long.' Then I immediately thought of all those times I'd been out running by myself that I could have gone into this and died."  Two months after Jon Wes collapsed, Gardner was fitted with his own ICD. His first words out of surgery: "Look, Mom, we're identical again."  Then, on a run last August, Gardner sensed something was wrong.  "I could feel my chest beating really fast. I was having shortness of breath, which I never have." He pulled out his phone and began scrolling for the number of his wife, who was elsewhere in the park. "The last thing I remember thinking is, 'God, if I drop, please wake me up.' And I remember saying, 'Have mercy on me,' " Gardner tells PEOPLE.  He adds, "The next thing I know, the right side of my face is on the pavement."  He'd passed out, but only for a few seconds. He was able to lift himself up before his wife found him. They drove back to the University of Kentucky Medical Center.  There, he learned his heart rate – considered normal at 50 beats per minute during rest, or 180-200 beats during exercise – was racing at 300 beats per minute before his ICD knocked it down.  "Then it hit me really hard," he says, "if I didn't have that ICD, I would have died."  "I was crying because I was grateful and happy," he continues. "And then I began laughing, because it was 50-50 whether I should even have it put in to begin with. Then I was just relieved."  So was Dr. Elayi. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, we just saved the life of this kid,' " he says. "What's better when you become a doctor than this?"  Gardner, thanking his twin, takes it a step further.  "I remember thinking," he says, "that God saved my life through Jon Wes."  "Jon Wes, his heart was stopped, and they had to do CPR for 20 minutes," Gardner says. "If he would have died, all those questions would have died with him. It would have been chalked up as a freak accident. I would have gone on with my life not knowing anything was wrong, and then something would have happened to me, and I would have died. My parents would have lost two sons and had no idea."  Their father, whose tests revealed the same genetic mutation, has since also been given an ICD.  Gardner hopes his family's experience can guide how the cardiac field views and treats the genetic anomaly. But for him, it will forever be rooted in his brotherly bond.  "I don't think I could have loved him any more than before the incident," he says of his twin. "There's days now when I'll see a text or phone call from him, and I used to take it for granted. But I don't now. It hits me once a day how lucky and blessed I am to have him, and that God kept him on this world for a reason."  Says Jon Wes: "I think God saved both of our lives."
After Jon Wes Adams, 27, collapsed on a run, tests on his twin brother, Gardner, revealed a heart ailment they've both since learned to beat