Fight to save life

Realising the driver was unconscious and wasn’t breathing, Brown put the seat back, straddled her and started doing CPR. At one stage, the woman started breathing and woke up only to slip back into unconsciousness again.

By that stage, other passers-by had stopped to help so Brown called 111 and an ambulance soon arrived.

‘‘I went back and sat in my car and just waited in the hope that maybe nothing bad was going to happen to her,’’ Brown said.

‘‘I still haven’t really got over it, it’s hard to go to sleep sometimes at night but I do know she’s OK.’’

Brown later discovered she’d saved the life of a 35-year-old woman, who had a pre-existing heart condition and who had suffered a heart attack while driving.

‘‘When I first got in that car, I thought I was dealing with an older woman, so it was a shock when I found out how young she was,’’ Brown said.

The woman, who didn’t want to be named, was on her way home to Auckland after working in Tauranga. She was in hospital for a few days after the incident and is now recovering at home.

Brown said she has kept in touch with the woman’s father. ‘‘I haven’t talked to her yet but we’re looking at getting together after Christmas,’’ Brown said.

She was thankful that the woman had decided to take a shortcut home through the quiet, rural back road.

‘‘It actually saved her life doing that. If she had been out on that main road, I wonder what that situation would have been, because it was quite busy that day.’’

Brown was also thankful to her employer Don Hellaby, a former nurse, who had just given Brown and other staff at Miranda Holiday Park a first aid refresher.

‘‘When you work in a place like this, you have to have that, because we’ve had a few incidents here.’’

This was the seventh crash 58-year-old Brown has come across over the years – the third in the past few months.

‘‘I’m in the right place at the right time,’’ she said.

‘‘This was nothing in comparison to the others, but I think it was more emotional because I had just gone to have my blood pressure and my own health sorted out ... I just found out I had high blood pressure,’’ she said.

‘‘It’s made me a little bit more aware of my own health. I think it’s good for women out there who work as hard as we do should really take care of their health because anything can happen at any time and let’s hope there’s somebody there to help you out when it does.’’