Although the couple had no history of heart problems the purchase was made because Diane worried about how long it would take for medical help to arrive to Coalmont (19 km from Princeton) if either of them should have a heart-related emergency.

On Dec. 30, 2011, while out shoveling snow, Bob Sterne’s heart just stopped.

While letting her dogs out, neighbour Suzie Michaud witnessed Sterne fall down, try to get up and then go down again. She immediately ran inside to get her husband Ray Michaud to help and then called her dad, Maurice Chartrand.

During this time, Diane was on the phone to 911. Within less than a minute, Chartrand and his two sons who were visiting for the holidays — Mike and Shane were on scene and began CPR.

Ray Michaud arrived just as Diane brought out the home defibrillator and together he and Diane hooked it up to Bob. The machine went to work and a shock was given.

“He gasped and then went out again,” said Michaud.

CPR ensued with Mike and Shane again until the defibrillator was ready to proceed. The second shock was given—Bob breathed and his pulse was detected by Shane.

By this time, thanks to the phone call chain of neighbours, Jodi Woodford, Chief of the Tulameen Fire Department, arrived and outfitted Bob with oxygen.

“It was scary there for a while,” said Chartrand, “but once we got him breathing, we knew he’d be okay.”

Due to treacherous road conditions, it took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive.

“It was awful, said Michaud, “we could hear the sirens from the ambulance for 10 minutes before they got to us. That’s how bad the roads were.”

On Jan. 12, Bob Sterne had surgery to implant a pacemaker/defibrillator. For some unknown reason on Dec. 30, his heart short-circuited and the implant will prevent it from happening again.

According to Diane, the doctors are amazed with Bob’s condition.

“The quick actions of Maurice, Mike and Shane meant that Bob not only lived, but he didn’t suffer any brain damage,” she said.

The defibrillator traveled with Bob to Vancouver, as it stored medical information from his event.

“I would highly recommend this life saving machine to anyone who lives any distance from emergency response,” she added.

The help given to the Sterne’s did not end once Bob was finally loaded into the ambulance. Neighbours took care of their motel, called the Sterne children, took care of their puppy and drove Diane to Penticton.

Diane and Bob Sterne send their deepest and most sincere thanks to their heroes, friends and neighbours, to the doctors and nurses and to God for orchestrating the entire rescue.

“We will never forget you and we will never be able to thank you enough.”

Ian Owen the Survivor & Mandy Edwards the Survivor

He was trained in using the equipment and had been given a defibrillator to look after as part of a community life saving skills scheme.

He said: “It was a funny situation to be in – this was the first time I had to put my training into action.”

“I gave CPR and administered two shocks using the defibrillator then put her into the recovery position,” Mr Owen added.

“If the Clun Valley Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) scheme hadn’t started, Mandy wouldn’t be here.”

Under the scheme, nine defibrillators have been put in remote villages and communities in the Clun Valley area of Shropshire, and 80 volunteers have been trained to use them.

Ms Edwards said: “I don’t remember anything [but] later found out that on the day I had done some housework and was on the phone to my cousin when I said I felt faint.”

Her cousin called Mr Owen who went round to his sister’s house before Gaye Edwards, a community first responder from Leintwardine in Herefordshire, arrived to help.

Ms Edwards was flown to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and spent four days in intensive care at Hereford County Hospital before being transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

Mr Owen said: “It was luck that there had been a training session the day before, it was luck that I had been given the defib to look after, it was luck that Mandy’s cousin was on the phone to her when she collapsed.

“At the end of the day I did what I was trained to do.”

Steve Sassaman said he felt a bit of indigestion. And then he pitched forward so suddenly that his face hit the floor.

“They always say that’s when heart attacks happen, on Monday morning,” Althea Sassaman said. “He just fell like a tree, right on the tile floor. It cracked so hard it sounded like the floor cracked.”

Althea Sassaman called 911 for what looked like a head injury but quickly realized the real problem — her husband’s heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing.

She administered CPR until two Susquehanna Twp. police officers arrived, and lucky for her husband, one already had four lifesaving medals to his credit.

After they arrived at the Sassamans’ Mountaindale home, Somma performed rescue breathing and Adams did chest compressions and used one of the automatic external defibrillators that Susquehanna Twp. police keep in their cars.

When AEDs detect the lack of a heartbeat, they jolt the heart back to life with an electric shock.

Adams, a former EMT who trains department personnel in AED use and CPR, had to use the device twice — and the second time did the job.

“The cardiologist said the compression [from CPR] sort of keeps things going, but it’s the defibrillator that’s lifesaving,” Steve Sassaman said.

Helping a heart attack victim start to breathe again is “a great feeling,” Adams said. In his previous saves in 2003 and 2005, he used AEDs to revive heart attack victims, performed rescue breathing and prevented a suicide, he said.

“It’s great to know that you’ve made a difference in somebody’s life, and they’re going to get a second chance with their family and get some time with their loved ones a little bit longer,” he said.

Steve Sassaman, who had no history of heart trouble, remembers nothing about his cardiac arrest. He received catheterization and got three stents in his heart. He wears a monitoring device that could defibrillate if it’s needed again.

Without his wife’s actions and the AED on hand, Sassaman said he might not have survived.

“With every minute that passes, your chance of survival decreases by 10 percent,” the Susquehanna Twp. resident said. “If AEDs are right there, we can save so many lives.”

Althea Sassaman said the township officers kept their cool while she “was very bent out of shape.” She told them, “You have no idea how much I appreciate what you did.”

Sassaman remembered his only previous encounter with police — getting pulled over when his car’s headlight was out.

“A lot of times with the common man or woman, that’s the only time you think of the police department. Until something personal like this happens …¤you realize how valuable they are, and all the skills they have to help people,” he said. “I looked at their emblems on their sleeves, and it says, ‘Protect and serve,’ and that’s it. Protect and serve.”

Mary Robinson ( seated ) the Survivor

But the 64-year-old Old Fort woman had a heart full of gratitude Monday, thankful for her husband, firefighters, paramedics, nurses and doctors who saved her life.

Robinson was the guest of honor at the first cardiac arrest survivor’s luncheon at Mission Hospital. The odds of surviving a cardiac arrest is only about 5 percent, so not many emergency or medical workers get the chance to celebrate with a survivor, said Frank Castelblanco, Mission’s director of cardiac emergencies.

“According to the odds, Mary really shouldn’t be here,” Castelblanco said.

Her husband, Lloyd, recalls Mary was in the kitchen, cooking their supper, while he was watching TV. She staggered into the room, sat down then “just went back,” Lloyd Robinson recalled. “I knew something was wrong.”

He then did something that saved his wife’s life, Castelblanco said. He dialed 911.

“That’s the most important thing, the first thing I would urge people to do if they see someone collapse,” Castelblanco said.

The dispatcher gave him instructions on how to perform CPR, and he started compressing his wife’s chest. Their dog, Abigail, was biting at his hand, but Lloyd Robinson kept up the rhythm until the first responders arrived within about five minutes.

Trading off, firefighters and then paramedics continued to perform CPR for 46 minutes, then applied a defibrillator until they had Mary’s heart beating again.

Gary Robinson, the couple’s son, was so impressed by his father’s action that he took classes and became certified in CPR. “I didn’t want to have to learn it on the fly like he did.”

The paramedics also started cooling her body to protect her brain from damage, inducing therapeutic hypothermia, according to William Kehler, director of McDowell County Emergency Medical Services.

After almost three weeks in Intensive Care and surgery for a defibrillator to keep her heart in rhythm, Mary Robinson was glad to be sharing sandwiches with her family and the people who saved her life. “I am so thankful to all the paramedics and the people at the hospital who didn’t give up on me,” she said.

“She was shaking me and saying, ‘Daddy’s dead,’” Tucker said. “At first, I thought she was messing with me.”

Their mom, Jen Labadie, had gone upstairs to bed 30 minutes earlier. William Labadie — just call him Bill — was already in bed. But something was very wrong.

“I think he was mad about the cat, because he said something about it, and then his head flopped into the pillow face first,” Jen said of her husband. “Then he made the most horrible gurgling noise I’ve ever heard. I picked his head up, and he was gone. The doctor said he was dead before he hit the pillow.”

Bill, 39, had gone into ventricular fibrillation — essentially blood is not removed from the heart and it’s usually fatal.

Jen quickly dialed 911, and stayed on the phone while performing CPR before paramedics arrived. “My panic buttons were completely out of control,” she said.

Sullivan Fire Chief Neil A. Henry was one of the first responders on the scene.

“He essentially had no pulse,” Henry said. “It would come back and then go away again … I wasn’t expecting a good outcome.”

Jen could tell that time and hope were running out. “At one point, Al looked at me with the most pity anyone’s ever looked at me with,” she said.

After working on Bill for more than 30 minutes in the Labadies’ bedroom, paramedics put him in the ambulance for the trip to Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene.

“When I saw the ambulance pull out of the driveway with the lights going but no siren, and they weren’t going fast, I knew it was bad,” Jen said.

Tucker, his son, couldn’t believe what was happening. “It was like looking down on a dream from the top of a glass (ceiling),” he said.

All Jen could think of was that she didn’t want Bill to die outside the hospital, which would have prevented them from donating his organs.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of a world where his beautiful blue eyes weren’t around,” she said, fighting back tears.

Paramedics attempted to revive Bill with electrical shocks three times at the home and twice more en route to the hospital.

It seemed like a lost cause. And then it happened.

After being shocked for the fifth time, Bill suddenly regained consciousness, nearly an hour and 20 minutes after being considered medically dead.

“He came back with a vengeance,” Jen said. “He started ripping things out of him.”

Hospital staff immediately called for the rolling hospital unit, which transported Bill from Keene to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

But questions still lingered over whether Bill suffered irreparable brain damage during the ordeal, Jen said. “We didn’t know if he’d ever be the same again,” she said. “He was hooked up to everything you could think of.”

Ten days later Bill returned home, his brain fully functional and his body on the mend. On Saturday he walked a little, watched some TV, sat on the outdoor deck and the family grilled shish kabobs.

“It’ll be six to eight weeks before he can be active, and he can’t drive for six months because of the defibrillator in his chest,” Jen said of Bill, who works as a bridge builder for Cold River Bridges.

Bill said doctors told him they can’t explain how he recovered after being considered clinically dead for nearly an hour and a half.

“They don’t know, they just say it’s a miracle that I’m here,” said Bill, who celebrated his 39th birthday June 30 while in the hospital. “She (Jen) did good, keeping me alive.”

“They don’t see people come back from this,” Jen said. “People don’t survive this.”

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the survival rate for ventricular fibrillations occurring outside of a hospital is between 2 and 25 percent.

“There’s no way to explain how he’s still here,” Jen said. “He’s the strongest, most determined human being I’ve ever met, which is why I married him.”

Bill’s longtime friend and coworker, James Hollar, spoke of his strong will. “He’s a fighter, and he never gives up,” Hollar said. “There’s not too many people who can come back from where he was … maybe nobody.”

Henry, who’s been a firefighter since 1974, said he’s never seen or heard of anything like it.

“Of all the calls like this I’ve been on, that’s the longest I’ve seen anybody go that came back,” he said. “It was remarkable, and it’s a good feeling.”

Jen Labadie, who suffers from insomnia, is amazed at how many things went right for her at just the right moment.

“If I hadn’t been ready to go to bed yet, I would’ve had no idea (that Bill had suffered an attack),” she said. “Or if I’d taken my (sleeping) medication a few minutes earlier, I would’ve been out.

“I do believe in a divine power,” she said. “But I don’t know why certain people get miracles and some don’t.”

Wayne Millen the Survivor & Family

Genetically, his odds weren’t good. His father died of a heart attack at age 66. His mother underwent heart bypass surgery when she was 66. His younger brother, after surviving two heart attacks in two years, died at age 53 of sudden cardiac arrest.

“My brother, Gary, and I were very athletic growing up and we never thought we’d have any problems,” said Millen, 60. “I realized, ‘There but for the grace of God … ‘ you know? That could happen to me.”

So Millen regularly went to the doctor. He submitted to all recommended medical tests and took medication that lowered his cholesterol to ideal levels. He worked to stay fit. And last year he bought an automated external defibrillator.

When Millen bought his, he thought he might be wasting his money — the device would be useless if he went into cardiac arrest while home alone or when he wasn’t home, or he might be fine and not go into cardiac arrest at all — but he looked at the AED as a little extra insurance.

Thinking other people might also be helped by it, Millen and his wife told neighbors they had the AED if anyone in the neighborhood ever needed it. They stashed the device in their upstairs bathroom.

It stayed untouched for a year and a half.

Last Sunday, that insurance paid off.

Millen’s 27-year-old son, who had just arrived for a weeklong family visit, used the AED to save his father’s life.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Alan Langburd, the cardiologist who treated Millen when he arrived at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. “And it’s (almost) Father’s Day.”

On that fateful day, Millen played a few quick games of basketball with his son, Jesse Millen-Johnson, who had just arrived from Utah for a weeklong vacation, and his son’s old college friends. They played for about a half-hour. Millen and his teammate won two out of three.

A forester for the U.S. Forest Service, Millen had said the week before how good he felt, how he was bounding up the steps at the forestry office. But after the basketball game, he felt tired and a little winded. That was easily explained: He hadn’t played basketball in years and he was playing now with guys half his age.

“Boy, I don’t have the energy that I used to have,” he told his wife when he went inside. “I probably shouldn’t be doing that.”

Millen grabbed a couple of baby aspirin. His neck and shoulders hurt, but he’d gotten hit in the neck during the game and he was pretty sure the pain was from that, not a heart attack. Still, the aspirin couldn’t hurt. More insurance, he thought.

He went upstairs to take a shower. He and his wife were going out.

A few minutes later, Johnson heard a thump.

She thought the computer chair in their second bedroom had fallen over. It had happened before.

“Wayne, are you OK?” she called from the other room. “Did the chair fall over?”

The only answer was the sound of labored breathing. She started running.

“I knew immediately,” she said.

Millen’s collapse almost exactly mirrored his younger brother’s.

A nurse at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Johnson knew what to do in an emergency, but everything seemed to go wrong. She had trouble laying him flat for CPR because he was too heavy for her to move. She couldn’t get the phone to work — the family believes Millen accidentally pulled the cord out of the wall when he fell — which meant no dialing 911.

She went to the window and yelled to her son and his friends, “Emergency!”

In the seconds it took Millen-Johnson to race upstairs, his father stopped breathing. He had no pulse.

“I was like, ‘Is this the way it’s going to end?’” Millen-Johnson said. “We knew this was a possibility, but at the same time you never, ever think it would ever happen to someone you care about.”

Millen-Johnson couldn’t get reception on the cell phone he’d brought from Utah, so one of his friends called 911 on his phone. Johnson started chest compressions. She told her son to get the AED.

With shaking hands, he tore open the bag and placed the pads according to the directions. Although Millen and his wife had just gone over the AED instructions the week before — they’d happened to dust the device as they dusted the rest of the house preparing for company and Johnson took the opportunity to learn more about it — their son hadn’t encountered one since a wilderness leadership course in high school. But the directions were simple and the device spoke commands.

The AED told everyone to clear. The shock to Millen’s heart sent his body 6 inches off the ground, but it worked. He started breathing a little. The machine advised CPR while it analyzed Millen’s heart. Millen-Johnson took over the chest compressions. His mother had done them for a few minutes, but 61 years old and dealing with arthritis, she couldn’t keep it up.

“I would have done everything I could,” she said. “But Jesse’s strength was certainly good.”

A couple of minutes later, Millen stopped breathing again. The AED again told everyone to clear.

The second shock, like the first, got him breathing again.

The AED advised them to continue chest compressions. Millen-Johnson did for the next 10 minutes, fearing the heart under his hands could stop a third time and that any second his father could die again.

Millen had been right that no ambulance could get to his rural home quickly. It took paramedics about 15 minutes to reach Millen, long past the point he could have been revived if his family hadn’t used the AED.

He was on his way to the hospital, alive.

‘Every day now is a gift’

Most people who have heart attacks first notice one of several symptoms, including pain or heaviness in their chests. Millen was one of the five to 10 percent who went straight into cardiac arrest.

“His presenting symptom was sudden death,” said Alan Langburd, the cardiologist who treated Millen when he arrived at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.

By the time he reached CMMC, Millen’s heart was back to a normal rhythm. At the hospital, Langburd put in a stent to open the artery and keep it open.

If Millen’s son hadn’t used the AED, Langburd said, “(Millen) probably would have died. And if he had survived, he probably would have had pretty significant neurologic impairment. Often, they just don’t wake up. Or if they do wake up, they’re mentally challenged.”

Millen had none of those problems.

Langburd has been practicing medicine for 27 years. He had never encountered someone who was saved with an AED at home.

“Jesse was a hero,” Langburd said. “(Millen) was alive and doing well by the time we got him. So he’s a hero. Truly a hero. He deserves accolades.”

“It’s extraordinary,” he added. “And it’s (almost) Father’s Day.”

Millen remembers nothing after going to his bedroom to get ready to take a shower. He woke up in the ICU. Doctors and nurses told him it was a miracle he was alive.

Medicated and disoriented, Millen was little confused at first, but at least one thing got through: When his family told him they’d used the AED, he smiled.

“So,” he said, “it worked.”

Millen spent a few days in the hospital. On Friday he was still sore from his son’s chest compressions, but he was able to move around the house. His wife and son stayed nearby. The trauma was still fresh.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Millen said. “I see them sometimes looking at me when I’m probably thinking the same thing: They came that close to going through a funeral this week.”

Instead, Millen-Johnson took an extra week off from work and will spend it with his parents.

“Every day now is a gift,” Millen-Johnson said.

They celebrated Millen-Johnson’s 28th birthday Saturday. And on Sunday, a holiday.

“It’ll be a very happy Father’s Day,” Millen said.

“What she said was so chilling,” Connie said. “She said her baby fell in the pool and she’s not breathing.”

Connie and her husband ran into the house past nine other children. She recalled the “look of horror” on the faces of everyone as she was handed the lifeless child by one of the home’s residents.

“It didn’t feel like she was alive,” Connie said. “There was no pulse and she was a steel blue and getting darker. She was soaking wet.”

Connie started rescue breaths, but it didn’t take long for Kevin to realize they were not working.

He started doing back blows and water started spewing out of the girl’s mouth, but she still was not responding.

As everyone around them was in a panic, Connie said she was hoping she was doing all the right things to save the girl’s life.

Kevin put his hands around Madison’s rib cage and Connie cleaned her nose and mouth to clear her airway. He began doing compressions.

“I could hear everyone in the background just screaming and praying,” Connie said. “I’ll never forget the feeling of her in my arms. Then, her mother leaned over and said, ‘Madison, you come back right now.’”

After about 90 seconds of compressions, Madison let out “a thrust of cries.”

“At that moment, for the first time, I thought we were winning,” Connie said. “I thought we had snatched her (from death). But, she went right back to having no response.”

Connie told Madison’s mother to keep touching her, that the little girl knew she was there.

Connie said that when police officers arrived, they immediately recognized the gravity of the situation.

Connie and Kevin said all they had to work with was the family’s kitchen table, and Madison needed a whole lot more than that. She said emergency personnel “scooped her up and ran.”

Once Madison was taken away, the couple found themselves standing in a stranger’s kitchen having just dealt with the enormity of a life-and-death situation.

“All I knew was that the little girl’s name is Madison,” Connie said. “Kevin and I both cried pretty hard in the front yard. We didn’t have the feeling that she was going to live. We just walked back home and didn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Connie and Kevin had such an emotional investment in the girl that they couldn’t stand not knowing the status of her condition.

The couple called a friend in the nursing field for help and received an email at about midnight that there was no word on Madison’s condition.

However, they were able to get their telephone number passed along to Madison’s parents.

Connie and Kevin eventually got what they were hoping for — a message from Madison’s father.

“He called me and left a beautiful message,” Connie said.

Madison has since been released from a hospital and has made a full recovery.

About a week after her release, Connie and Kevin had a private reunion under much happier circumstances with Madison and her parents.

The reunion was emotional for everyone.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” Connie said. “Now she gets to go to kindergarten and do other things.”

They believe that Madison has “awesome, loving parents” and simply called the circumstances an accident. Nevertheless, they view this “traumatic experience” as a teachable moment for other parents.

Connie said it is important for all parents to know CPR, especially if there is a pool and children are around.

Connie and Kevin have been married for 27 years and have four children. They also have a 2-year-old grandson.

The two credit each other for being the “hero.”

That day — May 22 — will forever be significant in their lives and they couldn’t be happier that their neighborhood walk took a turn that helped save a life.

Eric Lemieux the Survivor

Eric Lemieux was working on a tractor with his son-in-law when he had a heart attack. In a matter of seconds, his step-daughter and son-in-law started performing CPR.

“I noticed his lips were turning blue, and his face was kind of turning blue. So I started doing chest compressions right away. And then I noticed the second I started doing that, I noticed the colour started coming back into his lips,” Stephanie Dionne told CTV Ottawa on Monday.

Dionne learned CPR because of a mandatory program through work. She never thought she’d actually have to use it.

“Without the training, we wouldn’t have known what to do. All we would’ve done is call 911. And even though they were very quick to respond, I don’t know if it would’ve been soon enough,” Dionne said.

“I screamed out, ‘Daddy’s dying!’” she recalled, explaining that the exclamation was intended to get the attention of her 27-year-old son, Daniel, who was upstairs.

Ms. Crawford, 58, wasted no time, however.

A registered nurse at Southampton Hospital and former Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps member, she immediately started administering CPR—at first on the bed, but then, because the surface was too soft, she and her son moved the 6-foot-tall, 220-pound, Mr. Crawford, 67, to the floor. Her son had called 911.

Meanwhile, Daniel Crawford’s friend, Justin Dent, 27, who had been watching TV with the younger Mr. Crawford, ran outside to ensure that police found the right house, Ms. Crawford said.

When Southampton Town Police Officers Bartholomew Carey and Edward Henderson arrived, within minutes of the call, they found Ms. Crawford performing “quality CPR,” according to a police statement. They then took over the CPR and used an Automated External Defibrillator, AED, to help revive Mr. Crawford, a landscaper, who, according to his wife, had not had any previous heart problems.

“I want these two officers to get the recognition they deserve, to show that their training worked, because had they not come to my house with their defibrillator in the trunk of their car, my husband would be dead. It’s as simple as that,” Ms. Crawford said. “These two men, they’re my heroes.

“You’re dead within minutes of having a cardiac arrest,” continued Ms. Crawford, who actually teaches CPR to new parents at the hospital.

She also credited the Sag Harbor ambulance crew members who, along with the police, provided three “shocks” to her husband. They administered advanced life support and took him to Southampton Hospital. In the ambulance, he returned to consciousness to everyone’s delight, she said.

The couple were able to celebrate their wedding anniversary together on Sunday. Ms. Crawford said her husband joked that his incident got him out of having to get her a present, while she told him his present to her was surviving.

All Southampton Town Police officers are trained in CPR and defibrillator use, according to Police Chief William Wilson Jr.

“The two officers, as well as the Sag Harbor ambulance, just did a spectacular job, as did the family members that had initiated the CPR before their arrival,” he said. “I think it just goes to prove that early intervention and taking steps to initiate CPR saves lives. I’m very proud of the officers. I’m very happy for the family that the gentleman is still with us.”

As of Tuesday, Mr. Crawford was still at Stony Brook, where he had been transferred for further cardiac care.

“My husband’s plumbing is good, but his electricity is not,” his wife quipped. “We just want to continue on to a very happy ending.”

Ricky Dingraudo the Saviour

While his dad called 911, Dingraudo rushed to the aid of the man and started chest compressions, remembering what he learned in sophomore health class.

“I had never had to use it,” he said. “I was thinking about how many I should do before starting mouth-to-mouth when he started to breathe.”

At that point, paramedics arrived, but the ambulance was temporarily stuck in a snow bank, Dingraudo said. Neighbors helped Dingraudo move the man to a garage so he could keep warm while the paramedics made their way to the scene.

“It took three snow plows and an ambulance to get him to the hospital,” Dingraudo said.

His neighbor, who speaks little English, eventually needed surgery, but now is OK.

“He’s back at home,” Dingraudo said. “For a while I was stressed out because I didn’t know how it was going to turn out.”

After a hospital stay, the man brought over chocolate for Dingraudo and wine for his parents to show his thanks. Once the school learned of Dingraudo’s action, he was presented with the Larry Schroeder Award at a pep assembly.

“The chocolate would have been enough,” Dingraudo said.

The award, which is only given out once this year, is presented to students who make a difference in their community, said Associate Principal Jerry Trevino.

“During the assembly…the entire student body gave him a standing ovation,” he said. “The kids really showed their respect.”

Dingraudo said he plans to attend Elmhurst College next year, and major in criminal justice. He’s thinking of becoming a police officer.

“He certainly has the temperament,” Trevino said. “He’s calm and cool under pressure.”