LYNN – The City of Lynn has its detractors, but Al Melanson isn’t one of them.”You can say anything you want about this city, but the reality is it’s the people in the city who make it the great city it is,” Melanson said. “When something happens, there are no boundaries. There’s no East Lynn. No West Lynn. Just people who care.”It was nearly five weeks ago that the Lynn Jets hockey coach suffered a near-fatal heart attack while snowmobiling on Lake Sokokis in Limerick, Maine. Although he still has a few mountains to climb in terms of his recovery, the biggest being the need for a heart transplant, he’s making progress thanks to a heart pump that circulates blood to the left side of his heart.”I have three pounds of titanium in my chest,” Melanson said. “From what I understand, there are only 4,000 of these in the world. I was fortunate to be able to receive one and to have the people who had the expertise to put it in and get it to work.”Melanson is still at Maine Medical Center in Portland, the hospital he was taken to following the heart attack, but in a telephone interview he said he’s hoping to return to Massachusetts to continue his rehabilitation at Youville Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Cambridge, possibly in a week or so if all goes well.”I can’t move from here until the doctors are almost guaranteed there’s no infection,” Melanson said. “I also need to build more strength up.”It’s tough to feel lucky when something like this happens, but Melanson knows just how close he came.”They told Nancy (his wife) on a couple of different occasion that I had no right to be here. They didn’t think I would pull through,” Melanson said.Nancy Melanson, a teacher at Lynn Woods School, was snowmobiling with her husband and 12-year-old granddaughter, Ashley, when he was stricken. She was having trouble with her snowmobile when it started.Melanson said he was walking back toward his wife’s snowmobile when he started having problems.”I knew something was not right and it wasn’t with the snowmobile,” he said.Two snowmobilers came along and one had a two-seater. Melanson, who was still able to talk at the time, got on, and they headed toward the closest house. Mrs. Melanson stayed behind with her granddaughter and her snowmobile, which was on fire by this point.Mrs. Melanson said one of the men who came to her husband’s aid turned out to be a firefighter who was able to summon emergency help even though most people weren’t able to get a cell phone signal.Melanson said the ambulance picked up an emergency medical technician in Waterboro, which turned out to be a good move. Melanson said he “flat-lined” on the 40-minute ride to Maine Medical Center. A team of surgeons was waiting for him when he got there. They immediately put in a stent and a heart pump.Melanson said the support he and his family (he also has three adult children, Paul, A.J., and Lauren) have received has been unbelievable, and he wanted to thank everyone.”I’ve had such an outpouring of well wishes from everybody. I’ve received hundreds of cards and hundreds of emails from all over the city. It’s really been very touching,” he said.Mrs. Melanson said she’s been living in a hotel near the hospital since this happened, but she does come back to Lynn on Fridays to take care of some things. On one of those return trips, she stopped by Lynn Woods School and was greeted by a sea of hugs from her fourth-grade class and the fifth-graders, who have her for math.Mrs. Melanson said the Lynn Jets hockey team also blew up a team picture, which had been taken by the Melansons’ daughter, Lauren, earlier in the season. It was poster-size, and in addition to being signed by all the players, it read, “We’re the Lynn Jets, no one could be prouder and if you can’t hear us, coach, we’ll yell a little louder.”Melanson had a message for his hockey players.”Tell them to keep the faith and tell them I still need their support. Together we’ll get out of it,” he said.