Mass. girl saves choking friend a day after learning Heimlich
The day after 9-year-old Shailyn Ryan learned how to do the Heimlich maneuver at a “Home Alone” kids safety class in her Massachusetts town, she looked up and saw her friend turning blue.
It was during lunch in the cafeteria May 1 at Marguerite Peaslee Elementary School in Northborough when Shailyn felt a hand grip her left shoulder.
Her soccer teammate, Keira Silvia, 8, held a hand to her own throat and her face rapidly turned red, then blue. Keira was unable to speak, but Shailyn knew she was choking.
Shailyn leaped from her seat, stood behind Keira, tipped her friend slightly forward, then wrapped her arms around her waist. Making a fist with one hand and grasping it with her other hand above Keira’s navel, she then pressed as hard as she could into her abdomen, pushing upward as though she was trying to lift her up.
Just as she had learned to do 16 hours earlier.
Almost immediately, a hot dog piece that Keira had been choking on popped up from her throat. It happened so quickly that cafeteria workers and most of the kids in the lunchroom didn’t even notice.
“I didn’t really think about it — I just did it,” said Shailyn, who is now being hailed as a hero in Northborough, population 15,033, about an hour’s drive from Boston. “I wasn’t scared, but I knew that I had to do something fast, so I did.” And she did it just right. Keira was back playing soccer and football with her friends the next day.
“She’s awesome, a really good friend,” said Keira, who like Shailyn, is in the third grade.
Parents of the girls, school administrators and teachers in Northborough now have a message they’d like others to hear: Children are capable of much more than they’re often given credit for.
“It’s important to teach lifesaving skills to children and adults of all ages,” said Allie Lane, a director at the Northborough Recreation Center where Shailyn signed up for a two-hour safety class geared toward kids ages 9 to 11.
Keira’s mother, Noel Silvia, still marvels at the timing of it all.
“It really is incredible how it all happened — that Shailyn had just learned how to do the Heimlich maneuver and happened to be sitting near Keira the next day when she started choking,” Silvia said.
She called Shailyn “an angel who likely saved my daughter’s life.”