A Real Lifesaver

LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS

Therese "T.J." Cooper is in the business of saving lives.

As a senior police dispatcher in Lowell, Mass., her job is to get help to the scene. For a desperate mother calling 911 on Feb. 12, however, Cooper herself was that help.

Janet Newell was eight months pregnant when her 2-year-old son David choked on a game piece. Newell dialed 911 and Cooper answered.

"I was panicked," Newell says. "There were a few seconds where I watched him turn blue in front of my eyes. His lips turned black. I thought he was dead."

Cooper’s training stood both women in good stead. "Stay calm," she repeated through the phone line. "I’m going to help you."

"T.J.’s professionalism and her demeanor came through my panic so I could do what I needed to do," says a grateful Newell. The mother followed Cooper’s detailed instructions and performed the Heimlich maneuver until the piece came up. Cooper was about to give directions for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when David began breathing again.

"It was really a team effort," says Newell, who has since given birth to healthy twins. "She had to do what she did in order for me to do what I had to do. I will be forever grateful for T.J. and for the emergency services."

But Cooper, a steward in AFSCME Local 1705 (Council 93), insists that the real hero in this story is Janet Newell.

"That woman saved her son’s life," Cooper, 27, says. "I’m not the hero. She is. She was able to calm herself down and listen. And because of what she did, she saved her son’s life. The EMTs said that in another 18 seconds he would have been dead."

Cooper has been a dispatcher for five years and is part of a team that fields 40 or more 911 calls a night, dispatching ambulances and police cruisers, keeping callers calm and — in medical emergencies like the one Janet Newell faced — giving detailed instructions until the ambulance arrives. The instructions come from a series of flip-cards with a detailed script for "just about any medical emergency you can imagine," explains Cooper.

Cooper says the media attention has changed the way the community and the police department view the dispatchers: "People are starting to look at 911 and the operators and the system differently. We do more than answer the phone and send a cruiser or ambulance."

For Janet and David Newell, 911 was a lifeline.