Lifesaver At The Ballpark

Great things can happen here. (HT baseballpilgrimages.com)

Everyone knows that heroes are made at the ballpark. Few are made in this fashion. From the Washington Post:

The vendor in question was Emmanuel Marlow, a 49-year old D.C. native who now lives in Bowie. He’s done the vending thing at FedEx Field, RFK Stadium and Nats Park, selling beverages and performing guest services for Rocket Man, one of the contractors at area sports venues.

Marlow’s “day” job — which begins at 3 in the morning — involves caring for patients with Parkinson’s; he helps bathe, shave, massage and feed several such patients. He also said it’s in his nature to help people; he once took a free CPR class at UDC, figuring it might come in handy. And he listened carefully during his vending training session, when his supervisor, Terrie Smith, encouraged her employees to be vigilant at all times as they walked the stadium.

“I didn’t realize they were listening that much to what I was saying in my vendor meeting,” Smith said with a laugh when I asked her about that session.

At the game in question, Marlow told me that he was selling beer when he noticed a little boy in the crowd, coughing, gagging and turning a strange color. The fans in that section seemed to be panicking, but no one had taken charge of the incident.

“I guess they never had experienced a first-aid situation,” said Marlow, who had once worked a game at FedEx Field when a patron had a mild stroke. “[The boy] was actually going to a new color. I knew I needed to jump in and do it. There was no time for hesi­ta­tion. It had to be done right then and there.”

And thus, remembering his UDC training, Marlow indeed performed the Heimlich on the boy, who had a piece of chicken lodged in his throat. It took three thrusts, but the chicken was dislodged.

“I was impressed,” said Smith, the supervisor, who found out about the incident later. “I was like, ‘he did?’ He was just calm with it, didn’t come back and say ‘I did that.’ ”

The boy was examined by officials after the incident. His mother, Marlow said, spent 10 minutes hugging the vendor, crying and thanking him. And like my e-mailer wrote, Marlow confirmed that he quickly resumed selling beer, joking that his manager that day “was like great job, go back to work.”

“I was just glad I was there and knew what to do and did it; that’s the best thing that happened,” Marlow told me. “His mother’s not grieving over a lost child. That’s the most important thing.”

Indeed it is. It's good to know that there are always good samaritans out there.

Background Intel:

Washington Post: Nats vendor performs Heimlich on choking child