When 15-year-old high school student Shelby witnessed her grandfather (78) suffer a heart attack, she wasn’t about to let him become a statistic. About 9 out of 10 people who suffer cardiac arrest will die, but Shelby had learned CPR just days before her grandfather toppled over backwards and quit breathing.
Shelby told her grandmother to call 911, and the rest is a blur. The 911 operator talked Shelby through the process, and for what seemed like an hour until paramedics arrived, Shelby delivered chest compressions.
ER doctor and medical director for Fire Distric 4, Dr. Joel Edminster said, “This is a perfect example of sudden cardiac arrest that would have resulted in a fatality or severe neurological dysfunction” had Shelby not acted as quickly as she did and performed CPR.
Shelby was the first teen community save.
“I kind of went into hysteria, panic,” said Shelby’s grandmother, “and she just kept her cool. She said she was really churning on the inside, but you would have never known it.”
