Dishwasher’s simple moves save diner’s life
Joe Mangum once choked on a big bite of pizza and performed the Heimlich maneuver on himself.
But Thursday night, at his new job washing dishes at Catacombs Pub, was the first time Mangum performed the life-saving technique on another person.
Linda Krakora, a Chicagoan in town for a training session at Sears, was having dinner at the restaurant with the training session organizers and attendees when a piece of beef stroganoff got stuck in her throat.
“And I took a sip of water,” Krakora said Friday, “and that was the wrong move.”
She couldn’t swallow the water, so she got up to go to the bathroom and spit it out, but she started blacking out.
“Someone said, ‘Can you breathe?’ and I shook my head ‘No,’ ” Krakora said.
A woman at the table tried unsuccessfully to perform the Heimlich maneuver – “She’s smaller than me,” Krakora explained – so a server went into the kitchen to ask if anyone could help.
Mangum, 29, who learned the maneuver in high school and has not used it since the pizza incident almost a decade ago, said, “It just clicked, ‘Yes I know how.’ “
He walked into the dining area and internally talked himself through the ordeal.
Do it strong, but don’t break her ribs. Just enough to get the obstruction out. Keep doing it. Breathe. Don’t panic.
It took a couple of upward and inward thrusts, Krakora said, “before I finally embarrassed myself and spit it on the floor.”
Krakora sat down, Mangum assured her over and over that she was all right. Then he introduced himself.
“He said ‘Hi, I’m Joe,’ and shook my hand,” Krakora recalled. “I said, ‘Thank you, Joe, because I’m still Linda.’ “
At the end of the evening, Krakora went to say goodbye to Mangum. After they hugged, he showed her how to perform the maneuver on herself.
Restaurants don’t typically require that employees know emergency response, said Annika Stensson, spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association. The industry group partnered with the American Red Cross last year to create a poster, in English and Spanish, illustrating and explaining the steps to take in choking emergencies. The poster, 21 inches by 11 inches and laminated, is available from the association’s online store for $10 for non-members and $5 for members.
Catacombs owner Rob Brewster said that while the restaurant does not require their employees to have specific training, “we try to hire very caring and attentive work staff and we’re very fortunate that we hired Joe and (that we) helped in this situation.
“It’s certainly a good lesson for everybody,” Brewster said, “and it’s a good lesson for us to keep us on our toes.”
After going to her hotel room and having a “crying fit” on the phone with her husband, and after calling her son and telling him to enroll in a Heimlich maneuver class, Krakora stood in front of a mirror and practiced the technique Mangum imparted to her.
She planned on enrolling in Heimlich and CPR classes in Chicago.
“The feeling I was standing in a void, and ‘Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?’ ” Krakora said. “I definitely want to be prepared in the future to help someone if I could.”