Miracle Monday: mother uses valuable skill in crucial situation

It’s Miracle Monday, and today we recall how a nightmare became a miracle, simply because a mom knew what to do.

Jamie Hoover has taught CPR for 15 years, but she never had to use it, until she needed it to save her own son’s life.

“I feel like it is a blessing to have the opportunity to share this story because it has a happy ending,” Hoover said.

Her family was at a birthday party at a public pool last March. Her son Luis was 3 at the time.

“I remember that day,” Hoover said. “I was chatting with a mom, and we were engaged in conversation. My husband and I had taken turns watching the pool. I turned to throw my plate away, and just a couple of steps from where I was standing, I had heard someone yell, ‘Whose kid is this?'”

Hoover reacted instantly.

“From that point on, I really got tunnel vision. I don’t necessarily know where everybody was exactly, except for I remember hearing voices and knowing that instinctively, this needed to be. I needed to take action, right, and I knew exactly what to do,” Hoover said.

In her classes, Hoover tells her students they can freeze, or they can react. She reacted, doing two rounds of CPR on her son.

“That’s something that I can say that I’ve known this whole time, is that there’s something about the universe, and there’s always that knowing that he was going to be OK, and so if I had anything to do about or have anything to say about it, or anything that I can do, I was going to do it,” Hoover said.

She used the skills she knows, like using the back of her hand, and worked a miracle.

“I mean, he is a miracle, you know, there is that, that special M-word, right, that sometimes can get thrown around. But, in this instance, I really do think it’s, it’s a fitting word to describe really what we have as a family of four,” Hoover said.

A true miracle we recognize on this Miracle Monday, the miraculous ending we’d all hope for.

Hoover encourages anyone to learn CPR.

As for Luis, she believes it was three minutes from the time he went underwater until he took his next breath.

He was observed overnight at Golisano Children’s Hospital and has no permanent damage. He has very little memory of that day.