Seventeen-year old Abby Snodgrass was at her local Walmart trying on clothes in a dressing room when she heard an emergency call over the store’s intercom. An eleven-month old baby had stopped breathing in the next aisle. Abby found the child’s panicked mother among the crowd that had gathered. Someone had called 911 – but no one was helping the child. Abby immediately sprang into action and began CPR on the small child. Abby had recently learned the life-saving procedure thanks to her health education class at school. It was that class that saved the life of that little girl.
Abby had never used CPR outside of the classroom, and that thought frightened her. “I was terrified. I remember thinking as I’m doing the compressions, ‘what if this doesn’t work?’ But I had to put it out of my mind.” Abby pushed through that initial fear and saved a life. Minutes after starting compressions, the child began breathing. Emergency personnel praised Abby’s quick thinking – had she not intervened as quickly as she did, that child might not have survived.
Abby, a high-school senior, has enlisted in the National Guard, where she will no doubt save countless more lives.
