Quick thinking by Instructional Assistant Denia Stoops likely saved a kindergartner’s life recently.
Macon Hewitt was eating pizza crunchers for lunch when he began choking on one.
Stoops and Brianna Isaacs, who work together in another kindergarten class, were doing their tasks for lunch duty at the time.
“I saw a little boy standing there with his hand over his mouth and he was blood red. I ran and asked ‘are you choking’ and he couldn’t talk to me,” Stoops recalled. She grabbed him and performed the Heimlich maneuver.
It didn’t work.
She tried again and, that time, a piece of the pizza cruncher came out and Macon caught it in his little hand.
“He was crying and we went to the nurse right away,” Stoops said. She has worked 29 years in Carroll County Schools and says this isn’t her first rodeo on saving a choking child.
“We all have this training for a reason. Anybody who would have noticed would have done the same thing,” she said humbly.
Macon and his family brought Stoops flowers and a thank you card the day after she saved him. Macon also gives Stoops a hug every day he sees her.
“I will remain deeply grateful that Denia was in the cafeteria that day. She was able to both think and act quickly, and her response to the situation likely saved my child’s life,” said Emily See, Macon’s mother. “I have always known that my children were in good hands at Kathryn Winn and this just proves it.”