A quick-thinking mum saved the life of a stranger – just HOURS after learning CPR.
Rachelle Miller, 36, had just returned home from a three-day first aid course when Lewis Bond, 32, suffered a cardiac arrest outside her front door.
Rachelle leapt into action and kept him alive with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until paramedics arrives.
Lewis, a single father to Ava-Lily, five, says he will be “forever grateful” to Rachelle – whom he now calls a friend.
He said: “Things could’ve been so different if I had parked outside anyone else’s house, or even if I’d been there a week earlier, before Rachelle learned first aid.
“Thanks to Rachelle, my little girl still has a dad.”
Rachelle has now been named as a finalist in the St John Ambulance’s Everyday Heroes award, and will attend a gala awards ceremony in London on September 28.
The drama began when Lewis and his friend Paul drove to Rachelle’s house in Knowle, Bristol, to collect a fish tank they had bought from her online.
But as they were preparing to drive home, Paul rushed back into the house to ask for her help after Lewis fell unconscious.
Rachelle found the father-of-one slumped in the front seat of his van, not breathing and with his heart not beating.
And, just hours after she had been practising CPR on a dummy at Bristol City College, she found herself doing it for real to keep him alive.
Rachelle said: “It was surreal. I literally went from doing CPR on a dummy during the day to putting my new skills into practice on a person that night.
“I’ve got friends who volunteer for St John Ambulance or work as lifeguards and they’ve never had to do this.
“I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time and ready to help him.”
Rachelle’s actions were not able to restart Lewis’ heart – but she did help him to start taking gulps of air, and to keep him going until paramedics arrived with a defibrillator.
And doctors at Bristol Royal Infirmary, where he was then taken, said Rachelle’s quick actions meant Lewis survived the ordeal with only a few side effects.
Lewis said he had little memory of the incident – but that, thanks to Rachelle, he now gets to see his five-year-old daughter grow up.
“I’m so thankful to Rachelle. I don’t really know how to put it into words,” he said.
He added: “I had no idea anything was wrong with me.
“I’m pretty healthy and active – I was cycling five miles a day along the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal back then, to keep fit.
“But the doctors tell me I had a blockage in one of the valves in my heart.”
The St John Ambulance’s annual event celebrates the nation’s life savers and honours community heroes, organisations and members of the public who have used first aid to help others.
St John Ambulance’s regional director Steve Hargreaves said: “Everyday Heroes is the very essence of what St John Ambulance is about – ordinary people doing extraordinary things through first aid.
“We believe that no one should suffer for a lack of first aid, and the actions of finalists like Rachelle prove that first aid really can be the difference between life and death.”
ENDS
