By Paige Lambert
One never knows when lessons from school will one day come in handy.
For Lehman senior Ambrocio Turrbiartes, an eighth grade memory on how to perform the Heimlich maneuver helped him save a choking man’s life on Jan. 9.
The incident took place when Turrbiartes and some friends stopped in the Kyle Target parking lot. They stopped there to meet with another group of friends after all of them finished viewing a performance by the Lehman winter guard.
While waiting for a friend to get gas, a man from the only other car in the parking lot began banging on Turrbiartes’ window.
“He looked through my window and started banging and I was like, ‘woah is he trying to break into my truck?’” Turrbiartes said. “Then my friend was like, ‘I think he is trying to say something.’”
But Turrbiartes quickly realized the man in his mid-20s was choking. He then started asking the man if he could breathe.
When he realized the man couldn’t breathe, Turrbiartes calmly got out of his truck and banged on the man’s chest four times.
Erendida Arzola, a Lehman senior who was with Turrbiartes during the incident, said she was freaking out. Turrbiartes, she said, stayed calm.
“(The man) said ‘it’s almost out,’ and I thought ‘I should do the Heimlich maneuver,’” Turrbiartes said. “So I turned him around and pumped his chest a good two or three times.”
Turrbiartes said his only experience with performing the Heimlich maneuver was in health class in the eighth grade.
“When I first learned about it, I was just clueless about how to do it, and I just got it all wrong,” Turrbiartes said. “When this happened, I was thinking about what I should do and then I remembered how to do it.”
Finally, the man leaned against the truck and let out five hard coughs. On the fifth cough, the man let out half a bread stick.
Once the man calmed down, he then attempted to offer Turrbiartes a reward.
“I was just like ‘no thank you, no thank you,’” he said. “Life isn’t worth money.”
Just as quickly as the choking man banged on Turrbiartes window, he was gone.
Arzola said after everyone in the truck calmed down, Turrbiartes finally realized what happened.
“We were all shocked but after awhile, he was like, ‘Did I really just do that?’” Arzola said.
As the man walked back to his car, Turrbiartes’ friends showed up. His friends later asked how he was able to stay so calm.
Turrbiartes chalked it up to how he was raised. He said he used to freak out or panic when something would happen or while he was watching his little sister. It was advice from his dad that came to mind.
“My dad would always tell me that if something like this happens, be calm and don’t freak out,” he said. “I really wasn’t focused on panicking, I was more concerned that he was choking and to help him breathe again.”
Mariachi teacher Joseph Baird said he wasn’t surprised Turrbiartes was calm and went to aid the man so quickly. Baird said he is calm and helpful in all situations.
Turrbiates said Arzola saw the man at Subway, but avoided acknowledging that he was the man who choked.
The man never said his name, nor has he tried to reach out to Turrbiartes.
“He was on his phone while I was waiting for my friend to get there,” Turrbiartes said. “So maybe he was tweeting about it or typing a Facebook post about it.”
