‘Heimlich Hero’: Teacher Has Saved 4 Kids From Choking At Lunch

COLUMBUS, OH — An elementary school teacher has a knack for saving lives, and it's catching on. Brandi Slauter has been called a “Heimlich hero” for her repeated efforts to save students at Easthaven Elementary School from choking.

Slauter was in the right place at the right time yet again recently to help 9-year-old Kyree Isles dislodge an orange that got stuck in his throat during lunch, WBNS reported.

“I start with my fruit, and so when I was eating my orange, like a piece of orange got stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t get it out,” the third-grader told the news station. “I couldn’t breathe, and so I went to walk up to my teacher. She did the Heimlich.”

But Slauter said the Heimlich maneuver, now referred to in the medical field as “abdominal thrusts,” didn’t work at first, she told WBNS.

“I couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t cough, so I started again with the back thrusts and then the chest thrusts, and he still was not coughing,” she said. “I bent him slightly more forward and kept with the chest thrusts, and then he finally just gave a cough at that moment.”

The Heimlich maneuver, a discovery credited to the late Cincinnati-based Dr. Henry Heimlich, is the abdominal thrust method that involves someone positioning themselves behind a choking person and putting their fist just above their belly button before grabbing the fist with their opposite hand and repeatedly pushing the lodged object out of the airway, according to a description from Orlando Health.

What Slauter described, a combination of back blows and chest thrusts, is recommended for treating choking victims by the American Heart Association and American Red Cross.

Peter Heimlich, Dr. Heimlich’s son and an outspoken critic of the methods his dad used to promote his namesake maneuver, praised what Slauter described: combining back blows and chest thrusts.

“My compliments to Ms. Slauter and young Mr. Isles for staying calm and getting the better of that orange slice,” Peter Heimlich told Patch. “Based on her description, Ms. Slauter is not only a lifesaver, she's helping to lead the way in first aid.”

Young Kyree isn’t the first Easthaven student to be saved by Slauter, earning her a “Heimlich hero” distinction by WBNS.

In just three years as a teacher at Easthaven, Slauter stepped in twice when students were choking on pizza, and another time when one student choked while eating two sausages at once, according to WBNS.

“I think the word is getting out,” Slauter told the news station. “I think once we hit No. 4, now everybody’s like, yeah, we think we got the right person in the lunchroom.”