Sean C. Morgan
Custodian credited with aiding choking third-grader
When 8-year-old Mary Maschke started choking during lunch on April 17 at Oak Heights Elementary, custodian Dennis Hooper didn’t have time to wonder what to do.
He hasn’t had formal training, but he had to act immediately. He did and saved her life.
“I was laughing really hard because one of my friends said something really funny at lunch,” Mary said. She had a grape in her mouth, and when she laughed, she choked on it. “I was really scared.”
“Mr. Hooper saved my life, and Mrs. (Debbie) Danielson got me all fixed up,” Mary said. Danielson cleaned
Mary up, got her a drink of water and tended to her.
“I said, thank you,” Mary said.
Hooper, who has been custodian at Oak Heights for 12 years, was standing about 10 feet away during lunch in the school’s gym, he said. The gym is filled with some 200 students at lunchtime.
“You couldn’t really hear anything but jabbering, things clattering together,” Hooper said. He heard someone slap the table. “I look up and she’s standing right there in front of me.”
He isn’t part of the monitoring system there, he said. No one is any more. Monitors have been cut. There were people in the room who had training, but he was the one standing nearest.
“She was able to talk and was crying already,” Hooper said. She was choking and evidently trying to get the grape out of her throat. “She was already turning blue.”
And that meant there was no time, Hooper said. He had no formal training, but he’d seen the Heimlich maneuver performed on TV and been exposed informally to information on how to help choking victims.
“I grabbed a hold of her,” he said. “It was time to do something. She was turning blue.”
Mary was so small though, that Hooper said he was worried about breaking her rib performing the Heimlich maneuver, so he placed her head into a trash can and started slapping her back. After three or four slaps, the grape popped out.
People were gathering around by that point, he said. That included people with training.
“I was being covered,” he said, but the entire incident was over in less than 40 seconds.
He said he was emotionally rattled when he saw Mary choking. In his 12 years at Oak Heights, this was his first experience with such an incident.
“As soon as I saw the look on her face and saw what was going on, the top of my head started sweating,” Hooper said.
“I’m proud that I was able to do something without formal training. She’s looking right at me, and her lips are turning blue.”
He probably should have yelled for help, “but there just wasn’t any time,” Hooper said.