chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
HILLSBOROUGH — Natalie Hough wasn’t just home for the holidays, she was alive for them.
And following that season of celebration, the Hough family of Hillsborough gathered to formally thank 11 of the individuals who played a crucial role in saving the 17-year-old girl’s life.
At the Orange County Board of Education’s meeting Jan. 4, the teachers and staff who responded to Natalie’s cardiac arrest on Sept. 30, 2009, received the gratitude of the family and the board.
“It was a very touching, emotional evening,” said Michael Gilbert, public information officer for Orange County schools. “It was great to see Natalie healthy and vibrant. And it was rewarding to recognize 11 truly heroic individuals.”
And the heroism began from the ground up, from the student who alerted the secretary about strange noises coming from the girls’ bathroom to the teacher who knew to bring the automated external defibrillator without being asked.
“Everyone got busy getting help and doing what they needed to do,” said Lisa Segars, the business and computer applications teacher at Cedar Ridge and one of the first on the scene.
They dove right in
Segars wasted no time, beginning CPR with the help of another staff member despite not having any formalized training.
“The ladies who first saw something was wrong dove right into CPR even though they were scared stiff,” said Allison Eaton, biology, sports medicine, and anatomy and physiology teacher at Cedar Ridge. “When I saw them doing CPR I thought they knew what they were doing. They were doing an excellent job. I really give a lot of credit to those ladies.”
When Eaton — an EMT with the South Orange Rescue Squad since 2005 — arrived, she took over, using her EMS experience to direct the situation. A nursing teacher began setting up the defibrillator, and the two relieved the original teachers to administer CPR until the fire department and eventually the paramedics came.
While scared and overwhelmed by the seriousness of the situation, Segars said she reacted without thinking.
“The mother instinct in me came out because I knew there was a mother out there,” she said.
Eaton also reverted to autopilot, paying little attention to the thoughts flying across her mind and focusing instead on the job at hand.
“The fact that I have a lot of experience with this kind of a call allowed me to remain calm and think clearly and do what I was supposed to do,” she said.
But while they remained relatively calm and collected in the moment, the teachers said that afterwards they appreciated the full scale of the event.
“I do consider this pretty miraculous even though we’re trained to do this kind of thing,” Eaton said. “The whole series of events that allowed Natalie to survive everything went perfectly.”
According to the American Heart Association, 30 percent to 45 percent of cardiac arrest victims who receive defibrillation within five to seven minutes survive, making Natalie’s case a rare one indeed.
“When I found out from the blog they had on there that there was no oxygen deprivation damage to her brain that day ranks right up there with getting married and having my own kids,” Eaton said. “That was real exciting because generally you don’t have this good of an outcome.”
And though the teachers consider Natalie’s recovery miraculous, both Eaton and Segars said that their part in that miracle was miniscule since they merely did what had to be done.
“They don’t see themselves as heroes, I would assume, because they feel like they were just doing their jobs,” said Libbie Hough, Natalie’s mom.
Hough said she feels differently; she considers them heroes.
“A lot of people who have been trained in CPR can be very reticent to go ahead and use that knowledge, and they did not hesitate,” she said. “So, yes, in my mind they are heroes, and they are angels.”
