A nurse is asking for more people to become CPR-certified after she saved a woman’s life while off-duty at a LongHorn Steakhouse in Warner Robins.
Brooke Shugart was waiting on her tables at LongHorn when she heard a cry for help.
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, what am I going to do,’” recalled Shugart.
She says she saw a woman choking on a piece of steak and didn’t know how to help her, so she called out for help.
But, someone else had already sprang into action.
“She yanked her right on up and she was okay,” said Shugart. “It was a blessing from God that she was there. It was just meant to be.”
That woman, Valencia Jones, works at Navicent Health as a nurse and she says it was her first time performing the Heimlich maneuver on a person.
“We ended up in that booth at that moment for a purpose. I feel like it was all God,” she said.
Her friend Jentre Reed saw it and describes Jones as a hero.
“I don’t think she realized how amazing her actions were. She moved so quickly [and] she didn’t think twice,” said Reed.
Jones says she thinks more people should learn CPR in case something like that happens to them.
“Just go through that training. It doesn’t have to be a hard course,” she said.
Choking is the 4th leading cause of unintentional injury death.
According to the National Safety Council, more than 5,000 people died in 2015 from choking.