Dayton Daily News
XENIA, Ohio — Xenia paramedics and were reunited Thursday with a woman and her 5-year-old great-grandson, after a fall that left the woman unable to reach her medic alert pendant.
Mary McCreerey fell in her home May 24, splitting open her head. “I had to use both of my hands to try to stop the bleeding,” she said Thursday.
Officials credited her 5-year-old great grandson, George, with saving McCreerey.
“It scared me,” George said of all the blood. After the fall, George told McCreerey to push the red button on her medical alert pendant, but she could not reach it with both of her hands staunching her head wound.
Instead, George pressed the big red button on the alert system’s base station.
Deborah Kirkland, an ADT emergency dispatcher in Knoxville, Tenn., asked what was wrong . “Ga-ga fell and is bleeding,” George said. The dispatcher calmed boy and called Xenia dispatch. Within minutes, paramedics Jason Rodriguez and Cameron Stegall arrived.
“He looked pretty overwhelmed,” Rodriguez said. “He may not have understood the situation, but he did the job.”
Fire Chief Ken Riggsby said the department receives medical alerts on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. “This technology is a great thing,” he said.
The alert company presented the chief with a $5,000 donation to the department and presented George and Kirkland with certificates of appreciation.
Kirkland presented McCreerey with a large bouquet and got a big hug in return.
And George got a surprise gift — a red plastic fireman’s hat with a siren.
“George is the real hero here,” Riggsby said.
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