When an Indiana man’s 4-year-old daughter collapsed, he helped save her with CPR while pumping to the tune of the Bee Gees’ 1977 classic “Stayin’ Alive.”
It’s a technique Matt Uber remembered from a 2009 episode of The Office, where Michael Scott has his employees take a CPR class after Stanley Hudson has a heart attack. Today reports that Uber’s daughter Vera Posy collapsed during a game of tag, and he had to do something before first responders arrived.
“When I was trying to think about what do I know about CPR, my mind literally went to that episode of The Office, where they are doing CPR training and doing the compressions to the beat of ‘Stayin’ Alive,’” he said. “It’s just what kicks in, what’s in your head, and that’s fortunate.”
The incident happened on April 25, while Uber and Vera were playing tag. Uber said he “heard a thud” and found Vera “balled up against the corner. My natural assumption was that she had tripped and fallen and hit her head,” he recalled. “When I picked her up off the ground, she was just limp, her eyes were kind of rolled back.”
He tended to his 4-year-old while his 9-year-old daughter Nora called 911. He remembered the Office episode and began performing CPR on Vera before the 911 operator helped him. Paramedics soon arrived to transport her to the hospital.
Vera was taken to the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, where doctors tried to figure out how a 4-year-old could suffer a cardiac arrest. It was then discovered that she had a mild case of cardio ventricular non-compaction—and later, a much more serious and rare condition called calmodulinopathy, which causes arrhythmia in young people. She subsequently got an implantable cardioverter defibrillator inserted in her abdomen.
“While we are hopeful of course that she is safe and protected forever, we also have a mission or a commitment, both, [to learn] rudimentary CPR—YouTube it—or to go through a formal training because, quite honestly, there may be a time that our baby will need it,” Vera’s mother Erin said.
