Cheyla Scantling told ActionNewsJax, "It's not something I thought about. It was something that I had to do."
She didn't have a moment to spare when 10-year-old Matthew George came to her barely breathing.
The fourth-grader said, "One of the librarians gave me a lollipop and when I was playing on a computer, and I swallowed it whole and it got stuck in my throat."
That's when Scantling came to the rescue.
>> Need something to lift your spirits? Read more uplifting news
"He was like, ‘I can't breathe, Miss Cheyla,' so that's when I grabbed him, did the Heimlich, and the candy came up right there," she said.
It's a situation Scantling never imagined she'd be in, but with the proper training, she was able to be Matthew's hero.
"He's like family, really, so I definitely was going to be there for him," she said. "I definitely was going to help him and do what I had to do."
And Matthew calls her just that. "She's my hero," he said.
About the Author