The healthiest laugh at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree belongs to Lucille Drzewiecki.
That’s incredible, considering that Wednesday afternoon, she collapsed and stopped breathing during a weekend with her family near Breckenridge.
Luckily, her 13-year-old granddaughter Mackenzie Redd of Parker, knew exactly what to do. She got her cellphone from the car, then took charge of the situation.
“She dialed her phone to 9-1-1,” Drzewiecki, of Grant, Neb., said Thursday. “She gave it to her mom and said, ‘Mom you talk to them.’ And ‘Dad, you get down there and we’ve got to do CPR . . . .’ ”
Mackenzie’s mom, Joan Redd, said, “She hopped down on her knees right next to my mom and showed my husband what to do.”
Mackenzie told her younger brother to gather blankets to keep their grandmother from going into shock while they waited 20 minutes for paramedics to reach their remote cabin.
“She really did save my mom’s life, and there’s no way around that,” Redd said. “The paramedics said that. Even the cardiologist . . . said that was phenomenal.”
Mackenzie sounded surprised that she pulled off what she learned in her Red Cross babysitting safety class.
“I’m the kind of girl that, usually, I’m all like, I don’t know what to do, and I cry,” she said. “But at that point I was all like, I need to do this and that’s what I am going to do.”
Drzewiecki will have a pacemaker implanted before she leaves the hospital.
