A Bay Area high school senior is being honored as a hero after saving her mother's life, and she says it wouldn't have been possible without taking a one-hour CPR lesson.
By all accounts, Lori Dolan shouldn't be walking, shouldn’t be able to form her own thoughts and should not be alive.
“I thought she was dead,” said Larry Dolan, Lori’s husband. “And I started screaming for my daughter.”
Doctors credit Lori's second chance at life to the girl Lori gave birth to 18 years ago.
“Her eyes were rolled back. I knew something was wrong right when I looked at her,” said Lindsay Dolan, Lori’s daughter.
RELATED: High School CPR Class Saves Mom's Life
What Lindsay Dolan didn't realize on that football Sunday at home in Sunnyvale last November was that her mother had just suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.
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“I gave her a few slaps on the face. I said mom wake up. There was no response,” Lindsay said. “I was in so much shock at the moment I couldn't create tears in my eyes.”
But Lindsay overcame that shock and began mouth-to-mouth until paramedics arrived, which is why the Red Cross honored her Thursday morning with their Community Hero Award.
“I didn't know she knew CPR, first of all,” Larry Dolan said. “Glad she did, because if she didn't, my wife wouldn't be here right now.”
“I knew it was not her time to go yet,” Linday said. “She had to keep fighting for me, and that's what she did.”
“She’s my lifesaver,” Lori said.
Lori stopped breathing for 23 minutes that Sunday afternoon. If she hadn't received her daughter's oxygen during those three of those minutes, doctors are sure she would have suffered brain damage.
As Lindsay says, her mother gave her life in 1995, she gave it back to her in 2012.
Lindsay Dolan learned CPR as a freshman in high school. Because of his wife’s near death experience, Larry Dolan has also learned the lifesaving technique.
Lori Dolan now has a pacemaker installed and is doing well.
