PANA, Ill. (WAND) — One night last week, Tayla Rhodes was just trying to enjoy her chicken wrap during her shift at Scoop'd, an ice cream shop in Pana. Next thing she knew, she was choking.
"At first I was like, 'Okay, it's gonna go down,' and Emma, my coworker, kind of started patting on my back and that's kind of when I realized that I was actually choking," Rhodes said.
After realizing what was happening, Emma Banning asked if anyone in the store knew the Heimlich.
"So I come out here and I just nonchalantly go, 'Do you guys know how to do the Heimlich?' And she was like 'Yeah,' so then I go back there and grab Tayla," Banning said.
That's when Jackie Moore, a Junior at Central A&M High School, jumped into action.
"People are like, 'Oh that was probably really scary in the moment,' but I was like, 'it wasn't.'" Moore continued, saying, "I didn't have that feeling in the moment but when I sat down after, I was like, 'I just did that. Oh crap.'"
Moore had learned the Heimlich that morning when her church brought in experts to teach the congregation after mass.
"I'm just glad he did go over the Heimlich because I wouldn't have known how to do it," Moore said. "My best friend looked at me that night and she goes, 'How did you know that?' and I went, 'Literally just had a class on it this morning.'"
Moore's dad, Donald, said, "I was thankful that she was able to learn that and pick that up because it turned out — you don't think you're going to use it, but turned out she did."
Copyright 2024. WAND TV. All rights reserved.
