Pulmonary embolisms are not common. The husband of a friend of mine got one at a similarly early or earlier age, but he had inherited poor circulation and spend much time driving 16 hour days for quite some time before it happened. Thankfully he got emergency surgery and lived.
Some 20 years ago, a co-worker died of pulmonary embolism about 2 days after she had had liposuction surgery. I find it unlikely that one of the NPRs was getting lipo, but it seems to be one of the common dangers of that surgery.