Quick Action Saves Toddler From Choking

The toddler’s lips were blue when Gary Boyer grabbed him, flipped him onto his stomach and dislodged a piece of pizza from his throat. “I think I reacted so fast because that baby looked like my grandson,” Gary says now, nearly five months after his lifesaving performance at Coeur d’Alene’s Pizza Shoppe.

“All those CPR classes … You tell yourself it’ll never happen to you.”

Gary, 47, is an equipment technician for Verizon Northwest, formerly GTE Northwest. The company requires its employees to learn CPR and stay certified. Gary learned the lifesaving technique 22 years ago and has refreshed his training every other year since.

He was prepared to use it six years ago. A man driving in front of him on state Highway 41 hit an asphalt truck head on. The man’s legs were buried under the engine when Gary found him. Gary stayed with him until paramedics arrived.

Paramedics cautioned that the man might go into shock and cardiac arrest as they freed him. Gary hesitated, then left. He read in the newspaper the next day that the man had died.

“I was bummed. I’d comforted him,” he says.

“But I would’ve felt worse if I hadn’t stopped.”

He was eating pizza with his wife Jeannie and two other couples last March when Jeannie pointed out the choking boy two booths away.

Gary looked up as the boy’s mother frantically thrust the baby at his father. Gary was wedged in a booth between his wife and his friend. Without thinking, he pushed his friend out of the booth and ran to the rescue.

“You’re supposed to identify yourself and say you’re medically trained, but that was the farthest thing from my mind,” he says. “All I could see was this child.”

The boy was about 18 months old, blond with blue eyes. Gary had noticed him earlier in the evening because he behaved so well.

Gary grabbed him, spun him so he faced the floor, then whacked him between the shoulder blades. Pizza flew out on the third whack. The boy screamed, gasped, then cried. Gary handed him to his mother. She thanked him, packed up her pizza and left.

“I never found out who they were,” Gary says. “I would love to talk to them, see the little boy, learn his name.”

Gary buzzed with euphoria as customers congratulated him. He’d learned in CPR classes that many people know the technique, but few rise to the challenge when it’s needed.

Verizon honored him with its Morris Felton LaCroix bronze award for humanitarian service and $500. Medic First Aid gave him a framed Good Samaritan Award.

But Gary was most pleased that he’d fulfilled his expectations of himself.

“You don’t know what you’re going to do in a situation like that,” he says. “I didn’t hesitate. It sunk in later that I saved someone’s life.”

Watery reunion

Ann Hemington of Santa Cruz, Calif., and Kristi Rennebohm of Pullman reunited at Sandpoint’s Long Bridge Swim two weeks ago.

The women became friends a decade ago teaching at the International School of Kenya. Ann was the swim coach. Kristi taught kindergarten.

They parted ways after a year but stayed in touch. When Kristi underwent a double mastectomy for breast cancer in 1992, Ann arrived at her door the third week after surgery and led her to the pool to get her arms moving.

Kristi kept swimming. Ann kept traveling. Ann e-mailed Kristi from Nepal this year to tell her she planned to do the Long Bridge Swim. Ann already had entered. The two women were all smiles with hundreds of other swimmers at the Dog Beach finish Aug. 19.