WESTMINSTER — Cameron Durand learned CPR during his three years as a lifeguard at Water World. But until his classmate Lindsay Hayden fell from her chair and began to convulse two days ago, he never had to use it.
Hayden, who is recovering at Children’s Hospital, may be alive today because Durand paid attention during his training, and because Standley Lake High School had a small yellow box called an automatic external defibrillator hanging on a wall.
Durand and Hayden, both 17, were discussing the upcoming prom when the girl slumped from her chair.
“Mid-sentence, she just slumped over and fell out of her desk,” Durand said. “She started seizing. I heard her stop breathing. I flipped her over, and she was blue.”
The senior gave the girl mouth-to- mouth resuscitation, kick-starting some breaths. Her breathing stopped a second time. Durand began CPR.
In the meantime, two classmates ran to the office of Westminster police Officer Dan Mayer to tell him that Hayden was unconscious.
The school resource officer grabbed the defibrillator and ran to the classroom. Mayer placed two patches, attached by wires to the machine, on Hayden’s chest and delivered a shock. She didn’t respond. The second shock brought her back, he said at a news conference Wednesday at the school.
Westminster firefighters arrived and took Hayden to the hospital.
Everything worked the way it was supposed to, and a life was saved, said Mayer, 45.
But if Durand hadn’t known what to do and hadn’t responded so quickly, the outcome could have been different.
“He kept a level head,” Mayer said.
Durand had sometimes wondered how he would respond if he had to give chest compressions, and whether CPR would work for him.
“I made lots and lots of saves at pools, but I never had to do that,” he said
By coincidence, the machine that jolted Hayden’s heart was at the school thanks to a memorial fund in the name of Daniel Lunger, a friend of Hayden and Durand’s who died of a heart abnormality in 2006.
Daniel’s father, Howard Lunger, 45, plans to use the fund to put the $2,500 machines in all Jefferson County schools soon.
“This was one of those bittersweet kinds of things. I am so excited that it saved her life. I’m not glad it got used,” he said.
