Glad To Have Helped

In 1999, Kevin Stephan of Lancaster, New York, was a batboy for his younger brother’s Little League baseball team. During one game, a player who was warming up accidentally hit Kevin in the chest with a bat. Kevin fell to the ground, unconscious. His heart stopped beating.

“All I remember is that, all of a sudden, I got hit in the chest with something, and I turned around and passed out,” Kevin says. Penny Brown, a nurse whose son played on the team, was able to revive Kevin.

Seven years later, Penny Brown was eating at the Hillview Restaurant in Depew, New York, when she began to choke on her food. “The food wasn’t going anywhere, and I totally couldn’t breathe,” said Penny. “It was very frightening.”

Patrons screamed for help. One of the restaurant employees — a volunteer firefighter — ran out from the back. He wrapped his arms around the victim, applied the Heimlich maneuver, and saved the woman’s life. The firefighter was Kevin Stephan, the boy whom Penny had saved seven years earlier.

 — Aaron Saykin, “Teen Saves Life 
of Woman Who Once Saved His,” 
wusatv9.com (February 4, 2006)