CPR-trained teachers save 8th-grader who has heart attack

That situation took a twist when an eighth-grader at Heritage Middle School in Wake Forest was the patient and a newly formed medical response team came to his aid.

Justin Ochoa was sitting with some classmates Dec. 9 when he went into cardiac arrest. He remembers closing his eyes and everything going to black.

"When we rolled him over, his lips were blue already. You could tell there was no respiration," said teacher Chris Serwinski.

He and a fellow teacher, Archimedes Dinglasan, were summoned to the classroom.

Both had recent training in lifesaving techniques.

"I knew I could not panic, and I did not, and I just let the first aid training kick in," Serwinski said.

"Thank you to the teachers. Thank you to the principal, the school, everybody," his mother, Milagros Ochoa, said.