Topeka woman meets first responders who saved her life

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - First responders and one civilian were honored Tuesday night for their efforts to save a woman’s life April 28th.

”We just want to express our gratefulness to the fire, first responders and AMR that responded when I had a cardiac event,” said Shamara Parre.

Shamara Parre was at home when she fell out of her chair and started to go into cardiac arrest.

Her boyfriend, Dakota Brown was upstairs and he heard a loud noise and jumped into action.

”I noticed her on the floor and I rushed up to her and asked if she was okay, obviously no response, barely breathing and then I ran back to the bedroom and called 911,″ said Brown.

From there, thanks to his CPR training years ago, and the voice on the other side of the phone, EMS dispatch.

Brown was able to begin CPR on his girlfriend, efforts that potentially saved her life.

”After for awhile, and she was able to get some breaths in and then after a couple of breaths it faded out again. Barbra said to still do compressions and I did so, and then the fire department came and took over the rest.”

Minutes later, Topeka Fire first responders arrived and went to work.

”Usually when we get in there and it’s a code blue like that, we set up and get our stuff in there and we have our routines with each crew, they do their own thing, but what we did seemed to work that day,” said Dustin Shepard.

The next hands on deck was the AMR team.

”We established an IO into her bone so we could give her medications and then we did compressions and CPR and we caught an airway for her and eventually we got a pulse back for her,” said Nicholas Blecha.

Shamara said she couldn’t remember anything for almost two weeks, but she knew she wanted to reunited with her rescuers, to thank them in person.

“We just got to come here and meet everyone, which was so nice and tell them all thank you. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for every single one of them,” she said.

Copyright 2022 WIBW. All rights reserved.