Palmer women honored as ‘Real Heroes’

PALMER — Two Valley women were hailed as heroes this week, credited with saving a 15-year-old man’s life.

Providence Alaska Medical Center nurse Carey Werlein and Palmer High School senior Sarah Maffe were two of 18 Alaska heroes honored this week at the 15th annual Red Cross ConocoPhillips Real Heroes Breakfast, April 29.

Werlein and Maffe also were similarly honored with the American Heart Association Heart Savers Award in November 2013.

Although the two live in Palmer, fate brought them together to save a life during a jazz festival at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on April 12, 2013.

At the time, Maffe was a junior there to perform with the jazz band, and Werlein had traveled to the festival with the middle school as a chaperone.

Werlein headed into the auditorium that day to observe the high school adjudication when her daughter rushed up saying a boy had collapsed and they think he’s having a seizure. And asked her mom to see if she could help. So the nurse hurried over to see if she could help.

She said when she reached the Lathrop High School student he was breathing, but not adequately. Then he stopped breathing.

Maffe said that’s about the time she reached Lewis. She said at first glance, she thought the crowd of people was moving an instrument. But instead it was Lewis’s crumpled body being moved from the stairs to a flat surface.

When she saw it was a person, she rushed forward to offer help. Maffe is a lifeguard at the Palmer Pool and completed CPR training for that job.

So while Werlein gave Lewis mouth to mouth, Maffe started chest compression.

There was a sense of relief and accomplishment the two said when they felt his heart beat and breathing return. But Werlein said when they rolled him on his side, they lost him again and resumed CPR.

Although she has worked as a nurse for about seven years, she said this was the first time she’s performed CPR to rescue a person. She said she didn’t have a safety mask to protect her, but knew Lewis was in a life and death struggle where time was the enemy.

“This kid is the same age as my kid,” Werlein said she told herself. “I just have to do it.”

Neither woman knows how much time passed before emergency crews reached them and took over Lewis’ care.

Maffe said she moved out of the way as soon as medics reached Lewis. But Werlein stayed. She said she helped EMTs place the shock pads and then stepped back and watched while let them work.

“It was hard to watch,” Werlein said. “They kept losing him.”

Maffe described her experience that April day as life-changing. She said helping save Lewis’ life has led her to enroll in training this summer to earn her Emergency Medical Technician I certificate.

She said she included information about this experience in her application to illustrate that she can keep a cool head during an emergency and respond as trained.

So how does one say thank you when someone saves your child’s life?

The Lewis family has found a way. They are paying the tuition for Maffe to earn her EMT I certificate this summer.

“They want me to save more lives than just their son’s,” Maffe said.

But come the fall, she plans to study music at Cal State Fullerton while working as an EMT.

Werlein said most of the time people who need CPR don’t make full recoveries.

“If we hadn’t been there, this outcome would have been different,” she said.

When Werlein heard that Lewis had been flown to Providence, where she works as a nurse, she reached out to his family at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. She said when Leslie Lewis found out who was calling, she was eager to connect.

“We ended up crying on the phone together just being moms,” Werlein said. “It’s been awesome getting to know them.”

J.R. Lewis, Robbie’s father, said his son had no personal or family history of sudden cardiac arrest before this day in April 2013.

“It was just a total bolt of lightening,” the Fairbanks TV broadcaster said.

He said his family has taken every opportunity to share this story since receiving Maffe and Werlein’s life-saving gift. Lewis said doctors still don’t know what caused his son’s heart to alter its rhythm and eventual stop. He said it took medics shocking his son’s heart to re-set the rhythm.

If Werlein and Maffe hadn’t known CPR and been willing to act, he said his family would be mourning the loss of their son instead of celebrating his second chance at life.

For all involved, the experienced seemed to reinforce the value of knowing how to perform CPR.

“Anybody can go at any time. It’s called an emergency for a reason,” Maffe said. “I can’t stress enough how important it is to know CPR.”

Lewis put it this way.

“If it was as big a deal to learn CPR as it is to graduate from high school or get a driver’s license, think how many lives could be saved,” he said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.