Sorry Hughes 500, a heart attack is not the same as a TIA. After a heart attack you dont fly and you dont drive professionally not only for a period of time but also until tests indicate the risk of another heart attack re below a specific level. We cant do these tests with most TIAs (and it appears he didnt have the type where we can identify the cause) so we cannot predict the risk. We therefore set a longer period of no flying or professional driving.
This is rather irrelevant however: if you lose your medical you may appeal, you may seek out better medical opinions but you dont simply say the rules are wrong and break them.
It appears this gentleman may have broken the law four times in 21 months. Whatever your view on this single event, it is stretching the boundaries of credibility to believe there had been four such events where illegal flying was the only way to save lives. In this case he wasnt passing the drowning man, but had deliberately acted to make himself available. If he had known he had escaped prosecution the first two times by procedural failures by the prosecutor, he appears to have no insight into his situation. That to me makes him dangerous as it sets a pattern.
Lets hope now he has pleaded guilty he has gained that insight