Two high school students saved a teacher's life after he went into cardiac arrest
"Medically, I was gone."
Two high school students save teacher after cardiac arrest.
CPR is generally not something that is taught as standard curriculum in most schools though it's a skill that everyone should probably learn. It's always one of those skills you don't think about needing until you actually need to know it. Thankfully for one Detroit teacher, two of his students recently learned CPR in their nursing skills program.
Alfred Kattola teaches physical education at Oak Park High School. While playing a basketball game where students faced off against teachers for the win, Katolla started to feel winded before going into cardiac arrest. Two girls, Israel DuBose and Correy Coleman, ran to his aid to administer. The teens had only learned CPR a few months prior but immediately knew what needed to be done.
Isreal (who goes by "Izzy"), 17, and Correy, 16, worked together to get the teacher breathing again, with Correy even needing to apply the pads to the AED so the P.E. teacher could be shocked. The entire situation is a testament to how helpful knowing CPR can be.
"After realizing...staring at him for a while, I realized that from a distance he wasn't okay so I knew to get up and go over to check his pulse," Izzy told WDIV.
Correy explained that CPR is one of the first skills they learn in the nursing program while Izzy got choked up explaining why learning CPR was important to her. "My baby brother has seizures, so I always wanted to learn CPR to learn how help him if he ever needs that."
As for the coach, he made a full recovery and is advocating for some sort of fundraiser to get the girls' college fully funded so they can go on to work in the medical field helping people.
Watch the story from Fox 2 Detroit: