A quiet lunch turns into chance to be a hero
Published: January 12, 2007
It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time — and knowing the right thing to do.
After all, everyone else lunching at the Chipotle Mexican Grill in Citrus Heights that day just sat there, frozen, unsure what to do next.
The woman was choking. Her friend, having thumped her on the back a few times, was saying, “Help! Someone help us!”
The place was busy, packed with folks chowing down on their tacos and burritos. But no one moved — and really, people, this is evidence that first-aid classes should be mandatory at some point.
“The woman who was choking stood up and walked to the middle of the restaurant and started hitting her chest and trying to cough,” says Patrick Ashen.
He was there at Chipotle Grill that day, too, and thank heavens for that.
The 18-year-old Bella Vista High School senior wasn’t just going to sit and watch.
“Nobody else did anything, so I got up,” he says.
OK, so he’s never had a first-aid class, either. But he says his parents took one, a long, long time ago, and they gave him a few rudimentary instructions on how to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
“They taught me the things you should do, like, ‘Put your hands here and put your arms here,’ ” he says. “I’d never done the procedure, but that popped back into my head.”
Good thing. Because in late December, at a suburban fast-food restaurant surrounded by strangers, he saved the life of a woman whose name he never even learned.
Beyond question, people with kids should know this stuff — the Heimlich maneuver, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, all the first-aid basics — but so should the rest of us. Because life is filled with too many risks already: too many risks and not nearly enough rescuers.
And there’s nothing worse than standing by, inept and unable to intervene in a sensible manner, when someone passes out or breaks an arm or chokes on a bite of meat, like the woman in the restaurant.
Wringing your hands simply isn’t that helpful in life.
Patrick Ashen and his friend, Veronica Williams, were there for a quick lunch before he went to work that afternoon at a nearby Dollar Tree Store.
He’d dropped by the Chinese restaurant next door and picked up some chicken chow mein and fried rice. Then he met Veronica, also a Bella Vista senior, at the Chipotle Grill, where they ate. She ordered a burrito. They were talking about Christmas break from school.
In short, it was a perfectly ordinary lunchtime.
And then the woman at the next table started choking, and Patrick performed the Heimlich maneuver on her, and what could have been a tragic and horrible incident became instead an incidental moment in what, with luck, will be two long and happy lives.
“Some people clapped afterward,” says Patrick.
Sure, now that someone else stepped in to save the day.
“I looked over at Veronica, and she just stared at me and dropped her food and said, ‘Oh, wow.’ I was patting the back of the woman who’d been choking, and she thanked me and said, ‘God bless’ and ‘Merry Christmas.’
“And then Veronica and I sat there and finished lunch.”
Kids.
Tears and a round of hard liquor for all the adults present might have been more appropriate, but whatever.
“I felt pretty good about it,” says Patrick.
So he told his mom, who got excited and called his dad, who e-mailed his father and brother, who contacted the newspaper.
“It’s a big deal,” says Patrick’s father, Jim Ashen.
It is. But let’s let Patrick say so in his own way:
“It was a crazy experience,” he says. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I told some of my friends, and they were amazed. It’s crazy this actually happened.”
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