Our KNX Hero of the Week, LAPD Officer David Marroquin, used his alertness and basic first responder training to save the life of a colleague!
Officer Marroquin was at a work event when he noticed his colleague, Bing Sokolsky, struggling to breathe during lunch.
Officer David Marroquin Courtesy of Officer David Marroquin
“We started eating. I then noticed Bing, after a bite, he gets up and walks away, and he walks sort of behind the partition,” Marroquin told Heroes host Heather Jordan. “So I can't see him, but I start to hear what sounded like choking. I looked over the partition, and I see Bing sort of bent over, grabbing his neck and struggling to breathe. He, he had sort of like a deer in the headlights look, and I just immediately jumped up, and I went around him and I performed a Heimlich maneuver on Bing. As I was doing this, I was a little lower than I should have been, and you know, Bing was saying something like, higher, higher. So I brought my hands up a little higher, closer to his sternum, and I continued doing the Heimlich maneuver until he was able to clear the blockage from his airway.”
Courtesy of Officer David Marroquin
Bing said that he's extremely grateful for the brave people in uniform like Officer Marroquin.
“ I've always had a respect for law enforcement,” he said. “ I've been working on and off with law enforcement a lot of my career. Everybody in those departments, you know, are amazing people and they risk their lives every day.”
Officer Marroquin said he believes anyone in that situation would have helped out like he did, and reminds us that we all can be ready for situations like this.
Officer David MarroquinOfficer David Marroquin
“You know, I think it is incumbent upon us as community members to just be a little trained up on survival skills or how to save somebody's life through a Heimlich maneuver or CPR because you never know,” he said. “You might be thrust into this position of, I'm now the person to potentially save this other person's life.”
Check out our other KNX Heroes here.
Follow KNX News 1070 AM
