In The News: Custodian saves choking student

Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic

Rachel Lane performs the Heimlich maneuver on 5-year-old Luke Edwards

Having received flowers from her husband earlier in the day, Antonia Crater Elementary School custodian Rachele Lane was in a great mood during the first lunch period around 11:30 a.m. Nov. 6.

Very few things could have knocked the grin off her face that day, but as she cleaned up a cottage cheese spill, something did.

It was the face of kindergartener Luke Edwards.

“He always has a cute little smile,” Lane said. “I had never seen him with a startled look on his face. He was definitely big eyed. Something was not right.”

Lane quickly surmised that the 5-year old was choking and without even thinking, swooped in and scooped him from his seat with one arm and began to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

After two unsuccessful thrusts, the third produced a nearly three-inch long piece of pepperoni, sparing Edwards from injury and quite possibly even saving his life.

Edwards wasn’t too shaken up following the incident and after a visit to the school nurse, returned to class.

“It was so quick that he didn’t really recognize what was happening until it was already over,” principal Troy Fisher said. “He’s a kindergarten kiddo and his biggest concern was whether or not he was going to go out to recess afterward.”

Edwards may have been the calmest person involved in the incident, either during or afterwards, as Lane was worried that after two attempts of the Heimlich the chances of clearing his airway in that manner would decrease.

Afterwards, Lane said she felt like fainting, but that a commotion of children reacting to a bee in the cafeteria helped snap her out of her daze. Had it been an incident involving blood, Lane said she surely would have passed out and may not have been able to intervene.

Years earlier, Lane had previously frozen when a buildup of saliva had blocker her young daughter’s airway only to have her older son act quickly and use a T-shirt to clear it from her mouth.

“Without the district CPR and first-aid training, this would not have been possible,” Lane said. “The training was definitely important. Everybody should have it because of how it helped.”

Luke’s mother, Amanda Edwards, was both jolted and relieved to receive news of the incident via a telephone call from the school nurse while she was at work outside of Newberg.

“That was extremely hard to hear, but they reassured me that he was doing OK and that his spirits were OK,” Edwards said. “At some point in time he had told the school nurse that Rachele had saved his life, which hearing that from a 5-year-old child would take anybody back, but obviously choked me up even more than I was already.”

A doctor visit confirmed that Luke suffered no lasting damage from the incident and other than agreeing to cut up his pepperoni moving forward, Amanda Edwards said he hasn’t seemed fazed by the incident at all.

Luke himself has an simple explanation for that.

“I’m a kindergartener,” he said.

With some more time to replay the incident in her mind, Lane is amazed at the how various circumstances that morning, including that he was facing away from her office before she went to the next table to clean up the spill, aligned so that she was able to observe that Luke didn’t look like the “proper, polite” kid she had come to know in just two short months.

“If my husband didn’t send me flowers, would I have been that happy?” Lane said. “The cottage cheese, that never happens that we get that and it had just splattered. Like my co-worker said, ‘Your stars were lined up that day.’”