In a recent act of quick thinking and emergency preparedness, Juan Carlos Menendez, a senior at Archbishop McCarthy High School in South Florida, used the CPR techniques he learned in school to save his best friend's father. As reported by WSVN, Menendez found himself in a critical situation when his friend's dad fell into cardiac arrest.
According to Menendez, the incident unfolded while he was at his friend's house. "I was hanging out with my friends, and all of a sudden, my friend’s mom started screaming out, 'Someone call 911,'" said Menendez. When interviewed by KTVZ, Graesen Pethtel, Menendez's friend, shared his own shock: "We all run over to her bedroom, and I see my dad lying on the floor and unconscious. I froze, and so did my mom. We didn’t know what to do."
Menendez's response was immediate and effective. He conducted a quick assessment, finding no pulse or signs of breathing, and initiated CPR. "I turned him over, quickly assessed he was unconscious. He wasn’t responding to anything I was saying, checked his pulse, checked for his breathing," Menendez told WSVN. "I couldn’t find either of those, so I immediately started CPR." His CPR instructor, Mike Sica, highlighted the importance of applying classroom knowledge to real-life situations: "That's the goal, is to learn in a classroom, in a lecture room, and be able to apply it in the field, because that's where they going to be working," said Sica.
Miraculously, Pethtel's father survived thanks to Menendez's swift actions, and he is currently in recovery. "Even the doctors were saying, if JC wasn’t there, my father would not be here," Pethtel told KTVZ.
Menendez, humbled, hoped to raise awareness about the importance of learning CPR—"I 1,000% think that everyone should learn CPR, because unfortunately, stuff like this happens," he expressed to WSVN.
