By Cat Valles, Vitals contributor
Emily Lebsack, a nurse at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Ashby Campus, was shopping at Costco when she came across a woman choking in the freezer section. Lebsack’s training kicked in, and she jumped in to help.
Late last year, only two weeks before Christmas, Sutter Health nurse Emily Lebsack was shopping for ingredients to make holiday cookies when she saw a woman choking in the freezer section at the San Leandro Costco.
That’s when Lebsack jumped into action. The woman in distress was “white as a sheet,” Lebsack says, and her lips were already turning blue. Lebsack performed one large abdominal thrust, also known as the Heimlich maneuver, to clear the woman’s airway before the woman began losing consciousness, prompting Lebsack and another bystander to lower the woman to the ground.
“All of my training kicked into place,” Lebsack recalled. “I told someone to call 911. Then we did one chest compression before rolling her to the side. She had a pulse, and I could hear her breathing. Her hands started moving, and she started to regain color in her face.”
As the woman recovered, Lebsack “stayed with her, let her know someone was coming and made sure she was alert and oriented. I told her what was happening and tried to see it through the whole way.”
Lebsack said it was the first time in her nursing career that she’s had to step in and use her skills as a nurse to save someone’s life in public, and she feels grateful she was in the right place at the right time.
“She had all the signs of choking, and I could definitely feel my nursing assessment training kick into place,” Lebsack said. “As nurses, we’re ready to step in when needed. It’s helpful to see the training I’ve had — in my work, pre-nursing training and my life before nursing — kicked into place. I didn’t even really have to think about it, but I felt grateful everything turned out OK.”
“I do think that we (nurses) do show up for our neighbors and our communities, which is really a beautiful thing,” said Lebsack.
Emily Lebsack works at the Family Care Center as a postpartum and transition nurse, where she helps care for sick babies and transition them to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) or back onto the nursing floor.
Lebsack was modest in telling her story, in part because she works with so many amazing nursing professionals, who she said would have done the same thing she did that day. Based at the Family Care Center at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center’s Ashby Campus, Lebsack is a postpartum and transition nurse, where she helps care for sick babies and transition them to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or back onto the nursing floor. She helps draw blood from these tiny patients and assists with newborns transitioning from birth. She also attends C-sections to help provide baby and family-friendly care to infants and families, supporting skin to skin contact after birth and breastfeeding after C-sections.
In a twist of fate, the woman she helped save in Costco, at age 90, happened to be her oldest patient.
“Emily’s actions truly exemplify Sutter Health’s core values of excellence, compassion, and integrity — even while off duty,” said Myisha A. Liggins, Family Care Center Postpartum manager at Alta Bates Summit. “It’s inspiring to see how collaboration and commitment to care extend beyond the workplace and make a real difference in our community.”
Brian Centoni, the Alameda County Fire Department captain and paramedic who responded to the scene, was especially grateful for Lebsack’s actions, which resulted in an alert patient who was expressing her gratitude for Lebsack when the fire department arrived.
“I reached out to Emily and expressed my gratitude for her off-duty service,” Centoni said in an email to Liggins. “I want to recognize her for her quick thinking and compassion in saving the patient’s life.
“We truly need more people like Emily in our world, and we are grateful for her actions,” said Brian Centoni, Alameda County Fire Department captain and paramedic.
After her heroic rescue, Lebsack eventually did go home, where she made her cookie boxes with brown butter, toffee chocolate chip cookies; her own version of Little Debbie® cream pies; sugar cookies; and hot-chocolate stirs that turn into hot chocolate when you pour hot water over it or milk over it.
“It was it was a fun project, but it was a lot,” Lebsack said. “I might take a couple of years off from doing it again or just pick one cookie.”
While she might be taking a break from cookies, at least the local community can rest easy knowing there are nurses like Lebsack who are ready, willing and able to jump in and save a life during their next Costco run.