A bus driver from the Dallas-Fort Worth area is receiving praise after performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking first grader. Dallas Independent School District (ISD) bus driver Raquel Radford Baker was letting students off at school last month when 7-year-old Preston came up to her to tell her there was a penny in his throat. “He mentioned something about a penny, and I immediately thought, I said ‘penny?'” Radford Baker recalled to Fox 4. Video footage from the bus shows Preston talking with friends when he seemingly drops the object (referred to as a penny or a quarter in various reports) into his mouth. Preston then seems to struggle to the front of the bus to alert Radford Baker to his distress. 

Radford Baker, a veteran who has worked for Dallas ISD for 17 years, immediately jumped into action. “I grabbed him and ran down the steps with him. On my way to the sidewalk, I was actually performing the Heimlich maneuver,” she said. Radford Baker had received CPR and first aid training from Dallas ISD. Video from outside the bus showed Radford Baker carrying Preston onto the sidewalk. She alerted a woman to call 911. “I was running with him and just pulling, doing the Heimlich maneuver, telling him to breathe, breathe. By the time we got to the sidewalk, he was blue in the face, and he was limp. He wasn’t talking,” she said. Eventually, Radford Baker was able to dislodge the object. “He stepped to the side, and he said, ‘Ms. Rocky, I’m okay. I can breathe.’ It was a powerful relief for me because I couldn’t believe I just reversed this whole thing. That could have really gone wrong, you know, and I’m just grateful,” she said of the moment.

Preston’s family is especially thankful for Radford Baker’s presence on the bus. “It was divine timing,” said Giavona Bell, Preston’s mother. Radford Baker hadn’t been scheduled to work that day and was covering for a co-worker. “I feel like God placed me there for a reason. If I wasn’t there, I don’t know what the other driver may have done. I mean, I don’t know. I was nervous at the time, I was, I just couldn’t panic. All I said was God help me. Help me save this baby. That’s all I knew,” she told Fox of her being there. Bell was able to thank Radford Baker in person, calling her “a part of our family.” Dallas ISD celebrated Radford Baker’s quick thinking by throwing her a party and gifting her a cape. “I’m still in shock, I can’t believe this actually happened,” she said. “I’m just grateful that I was able to save him.” She is encouraging CPR and first aid training to become a standard professional development for all Dallas ISD bus drivers.