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Early one morning, before anyone else in the house was up, 18 month old Daylen Hall went outside to look at the “big bathtub” in his backyard. When his grandmother discovered him in the family pool, he was only visible because of his bright yellow SpongeBob pajamas.
Daylen’s mother, Christina Hall, jumped in, got him out and started CPR, drawing from her American Red Cross training at Lake Wales High School. Training she had recently renewed in the United States Marine Corps.
When exhaustion and emotions overcame Hall, her brother Matt Kirchberg took over. An assistant swim coach at Frostproof High School in Polk County, Kirchberg was able to revive his nephew just before emergency crews arrived.
“I didn’t think about that he was family,” Kirchberg said. “He was a child I was trying to save.”
As Daylen began to breathe on his own, his family felt relief just hearing him cry as he reached for his mother while being boarded onto a rescue helicopter.
“He did it beautifully,” said grandmother Cindy Kirchberg of the uncle’s heroics.
Now she’s looking into ways to get other family members trained in CPR and First Aid. “It’s so important for people to know it,” she adds. “They never will know when they will need it.”
In the past fiscal year, the American Red Cross Mid-Florida Region trained more than 37,000 people in CPR and first aid. 17,000 more were trained in lifeguarding skills and in swimming and aquatic safety.
Whether it’s down the street, across the country or around the world the American Red Cross is there, every day, because of you, training people to save lives.
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