Nine-month-old Tucker Pearson began choking on a small piece of plastic that a young sibling had placed in his mouth on a Friday morning at his family's home in Stanwood, Washington. His father, Mitch Pearson, is a Central Pierce Fire & Rescue firefighter, and his mother, Sophie Pearson, is a former EMT yet even with two trained responders in the house, the moment turned into what Mitch called a terrifying scramble to save his son's life.
According to KIRO 7, when the initial back blows failed to clear Tucker's airway, Sophie ran across the street to get their neighbor, Brooke Jacobson, a Snohomish County 911 dispatcher and former EMT. Jacobson took over delivering back blows on the infant while Mitch turned his attention to the couple's screaming six-year-old and waited for law enforcement to arrive. Central Pierce Fire & Rescue, in a Facebook post, said the family shared their story to encourage others in the community to get trained in CPR and basic first aid.
A Household of Trained Responders Still Needed Help
Mitch has worked in emergency response for nearly 11 years, and Sophie's own EMT background meant the family leaned hard on its emergency-response training in the moment. But the chaos of managing multiple young children while Tucker was losing color, the same KIRO 7 report notes, underscored why immediate neighbor assistance mattered before formal EMS could arrive.
Mitch pointed to the fact that the national average response time for emergency medical services runs around seven minutes, per the station's report, a gap that explains why bystander action before first responders show up can be the difference in an emergency. Locally, that window can stretch even longer: neighboring Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue reported an average total emergency response time of 8 minutes and 51 seconds across more than 1,250 monthly calls as of May, according to Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue.
Seconds From Cardiac Arrest
As Mitch, Jacobson, and responding law enforcement officers inspected Tucker's airway with a flashlight and prepared to begin CPR, the same account describes Tucker as limp and losing color \u2014 and then, as the obstruction dislodged, his eyes opened. Tucker's airway cleared after the family and neighbor acted quickly, and he is now doing well.
The rescue also reflects a broader shift in medical guidance. The 2025 American Heart Association and American Academy of Pediatrics CPR guidelines, issued in a joint update marking the first full science revision to resuscitation standards since 2020, changed infant choking response protocols to alternate cycles of five back blows and five chest thrusts using the heel of one hand, according to the American Heart Association. The old two-finger technique was dropped for insufficient compression depth.
Why Local Fire Officials Keep Pushing CPR Classes
Choking remains a leading cause of unintentional injury death for young children in the United States, with roughly one child dying from a food or foreign-object choking emergency every five days, according to data cited by NovaCare, which notes children under age five account for 75% of pediatric choking fatalities. That statistic helps explain why Central Pierce Fire & Rescue actively encourages community members to learn CPR and basic first aid, offering day-long CPR and First Aid classes as well as youth Safe Sitter programs at Station 71 in Puyallup that specifically cover infant choking relief and basic life support.
Central Pierce Fire & Rescue operates 20 staffed stations with 485 first responders across a 178-square-mile district in Pierce County, answering more than 45,000 call responses a year, according to the department. Mitch and his family shared their story to encourage others to get trained, and Central Pierce framed the incident on Facebook with the message that training matters when seconds count.
The 911 System Behind the Neighbor Who Helped
Jacobson's day job puts her inside one of the busiest emergency communications operations in the state. Snohomish County 911, known as SNO911, is Washington's largest dispatch center by volume and service area, processing an average of 2,031 emergency calls or texts daily \u2014 roughly one call every 42 seconds \u2014 according to the Lynnwood Times. That volume gives some context for why a dispatcher with hands-on EMT training was able to step in so decisively when a neighbor came knocking.
Tucker is doing well now, his family says, and they hope his close call pushes more parents and caregivers toward getting trained themselves. It is a message Hoodline has covered before, in cases where quick bystander action cleared a choking child's airway before paramedics could reach the scene.
