Union CPR training saves a life

Most members who take AFT training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation never get a chance to use it. 

That was not the case for Robin Herrin, a special education paraprofessional who saved a woman’s life on New Year’s Eve. She was ringing in the new year with her husband and sister-in-law at a resort casino when, after dinner, she heard a woman cry for help because her wheelchair-bound mother had slumped over and stopped breathing.

“I didn’t want the mother to die in front of her daughter,” says Herrin, a member of Red River United in Shreveport, La.

Herrin had taken CPR training at the AFT several years ago. She found the older woman without a pulse, her lips and nails turning blue. As she’d practiced in AFT training, Herrin stated that she knew how to do CPR, asked a bystander to call 911, and told another bystander to bring the hotel’s defibrillator.

It seemed like just a few breaths and a couple of rounds of compressions before paramedics arrived. By the time they did, the woman had resumed breathing.

“I was a little bit shaken up,” Herrin says, but “glad I was able to help.“

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