A Plainview-Old Bethpage sixth-grader was in class at Howard B. Mattlin Middle School on March 31, when the unthinkable happened: he suffered a cardiac arrest.
The building’s students and staff worked together to revive the student and keep him alive.
“This was a miracle,” Avigail Vohs, the school’s nurse, said.
Vohs said she and two other teachers rushed into the room after the student had collapsed. They had called 911 and used a defibrillator, and Vohs said she performed CPR for roughly 10 minutes before the student regained consciousness.
Vohs said she was terrified when she found out the severity of the situation.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to be there,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘I hate this, please don’t die, come back,’ and I kept working and kept going. I tell people it was the worst and best day of my life.”
Vohs, who has worked as a nurse for nearly two decades and began working at the middle school in 2021, said she had never experienced something similar to what occurred that day in a school.
She said it was different to be working with teachers during a medical emergency rather than other doctors or nurses, like she would have when she worked at a hospital.
ThePlainview-Old Bethpage Central School District Board of Educationhonored 11 students and staff from the middle school who helped save a student’s life.
Joseph Coladonato, the middle school principal, Regina Talento and Christine Krowles, the school’s assistant principals, Vohs, Sarah Holden, and Kathryn Donegan, teachers, Stephanie Ralton, a guidance counselor, Aviva Sala, a social worker, and Cooper Sullivan, Jacob Goodman, Cameron Margulies, students, were all honored at the board’s April 20 meeting.
Source: LI Press
