Anchorage Daily News

Brian Flaherty and his wife, Kim, were watching the news over dinner in their Hillside home last Saturday night when their 9-month-old dog, a Shiba Inu named Ammo, began barking like crazy.

Something was wrong. Kim ran upstairs and started screaming. Their daughter, Christina, 19, was face down, passed out, her face gray and lips blue.

Christina and her 17-year-old brother, David, both autistic, had been eating dinner and watching cartoons. David went to the bathroom and Christina, eating and laughing at the same time, choked on some french fries. It wasn't just a clear-your-throat choke. It was a suffocate-and-die choke.

Brian's first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training last spring -- he's taken classes every few years since 1981 -- was about to get the ultimate test.

"I immediately got into it as soon as I got upstairs," he said. "I kept saying, 'Okay, remember your CPR training, you got to do the ABC's.' "

Kim called 911 as Brian went through the three letters that stood between his daughter and death.

A is for airway. He tilted Christina's head back and did a chin lift and finger sweep, removing fries from her mouth.

B is for breathing. But fries were stuck in her throat, making it nearly impossible for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to do much good. Brian skipped this and went straight to the last step.

C is for circulation. He put his daughter on her back and pushed down hard on her stomach. "It didn't do anything," Brian said. "My heart just sunk."

It was then he remembered what CPR instructors told him: Sometimes successful compressions are so hard you break a few ribs.

"So I just went ahead and gave it all I got," Brian said.

Seconds later, his daughter took in a heavy breath and her blue lips turned to pink.

Paramedics arrived four minutes later and told Brian he'd saved his daughter's life.

Only 25 percent of the patients who show up in hospitals after being saved by CPR get saved by amateurs like Brian -- people who know CPR but aren't first responders, said Jim Foster, a battalion chief with the Anchorage Fire Department.

And that's a problem. The first four to eight minutes, before EMTs or paramedics can get there, are critical, he said.

"CPR performed by a citizen or bystander correlates with double or tripling the survival rate," said Foster, a 28-year paramedic veteran. "We really need to penetrate the population for more people to step up and perform CPR."

Especially since 80 percent of cardiac arrests occur in the home, he said.

There are three options for learning the essentials of CPR: traditional classes, usually several hours; online classes; or CPR in a box, which comes with an inflatable mannequin and instructional DVD.

"People are afraid to intervene, afraid to step up and help," Foster said. "The training builds a comfort level to encourage people to act -- that's what it's all about."

As for the Flahertys, they've changed the rules for eating, Brian said -- "Nobody eats unless somebody's there with you."

LEARN LOCALLY: For a schedule of first aid and CPR classes, click on "Training," then "Course Schedules."

alaska.redcross.org

LEARN ONLINE: Take a CPR class over the Internet.

www.onlineaha.org, www.cprtoday.com

CPR ANYTIME: Train others with this American Heart Association kit. Place your cursor over "CPR & ECC," then drag down to "CPR Anytime."

www.americanheart.org

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