These fifth-graders saved their best friend’s life!

When fifth-grader Bryce Greeson was choking on a bite of his lunch, his buddy Hayden Gower saw the Heimlich maneuver poster on the cafeteria wall—and sprang into action!

This is my all-time favorite lunch!” fifth-grader Bryce Greeson announced as he munched on a corndog with his classmates Hayden Gower and Xander Benitez in the Buford Academy cafeteria.

“I bet I can beat both of you to the top of the rock wall at recess!” Hayden said.

“Yea, right. In your dreams,” Bryce snickered.

“I’d rather play wall ball,” Xander shrugged, glancing first toward Hayden, and then . . .

“Bryce?”

Somebody needs to do the Heimlich! Hayden realized

Suddenly, Bryce’s face had gone fire-engine red. He was clutching at his throat. And his eyes were wide with silent panic.

Xander noticed Bryce had dropped his corndog. Leaping up, he shouted, “Somebody help! Bryce is choking!”

Bryce tried frantically to exhale and dislodge the chunk of corndog stuck in his windpipe, but it wouldn’t budge—and the room started swimming. I’m going to die! he realized. With more than 350 students in the Buford, Georgia, cafeteria, Principal Kaleen Pulley was assisting the cashier on the far side of the room when she heard Xander’s frantic cry.

“Somebody do something! Hurry!” other kids cried out, and as Bryce slumped and began to topple from his stool, Principal Pulley pushed her way through the frantic crowd.

Meanwhile, Hayden leapt up. Hayden was a football player, and Coach had taught him to act swiftly and decisively. But even if Hayden could catch his pal before he fell, it wouldn’t keep him alive, he knew.

Somebody needs to do the Heimlich! he realized, but at 10, though he knew what it was, he’d never been trained to perform the maneuver.

Just then, his gaze fell on a poster on the cafeteria wall, demonstrating what to do if someone was choking. There was no time to go study the chart. But Hayden had seen the poster several times before. And he was a good student with a good memory . . .

This is the biggest test of my life! he thought, and closing his eyes, tried to recall what it showed.

A knotted fist, he remembered, so he wrapped his arms around his friend and squeezed just beneath Bryce’s rib cage.

“As hard as you can!” he recalled someone doing a demonstration on TV saying, so he pulled his fist toward him, in and up.

The first time he tried, nothing happened.

The second time —nothing again.

Come on! Hayden despaired, his adrenalin pumping hard— and he gave one final, desperate try with all his might.

Principal Pulley braced herself for the worst as she dashed the last few yards to the lunch table where Hayden clutched his friend around the middle. Bryce’s lips were blue; his arms flopping like a rag doll’s at his side.

Suddenly, though, Bryce’s head lurched forward—and a chunk of corndog flew across the table!

“The school nurse is on her way,” Principal Pulley comforted him. “You’re going to be fine, thanks to your friends!”

After the nurse pronounced Bryce just that, Principal Pulley announced over the cafeteria PA, “I want everyone to know we have two heroes in the building—hayden Gower and Xander Benitez—and I couldn’t be more proud!”

The students clapped and cheered.

“I could have died. You guys saved my life!” Bryce beamed.

The school immediately began developing formal Heimlich and CPR training, and local firefighters reinforced the message when they arrived with a ladder truck to present Hayden and Xander with awards. “You students are the true first responders,” the fire chief said. “Even at our fastest it can take us four to ten minutes to reach the scene, and sometimes that’s not soon enough.”

“I just did what had to be done,” Hayden shrugged.

“He’s always been a great friend. Now he’s my lifesaver, too!” insisted Bryce, who also thanked Xander for sending out the S.O.S. “If you look up hero in the dictionary, you’ll see both my buddies’ pictures!”

“Be prepared!” Boy Scout motto