By Elizabeth Davies
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
Copyright 2006 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
PECATONICA, ILL. — You’ve stopped breathing and you need cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Who do you want to perform it?
A. A doctor.
B. A nurse.
C. Bonnie Holeton of Pecatonica.
OK, so the first two are probably pretty good options. But if a recent CPR competition is any indication, Holeton is definitely a top choice. The CPR instructor and volunteer paramedic was among the country’s most accurate CPR providers during a national competition earlier this year in Florida.
The Zoll CPR Challenge tested the skills of more than 270 CPR instructors by having them perform CPR on a computerized dummy for two minutes. The competitors who best maintained the proper rate and depth of compressions were crowned the winners.
A woman from Louisiana won, because 99.5 percent of her compressions were accurate. Holeton and a man from South Carolina tied for second place, both reaching 99.01 percent accuracy.
“I was surprised,” Holeton said. “Being able to push at the right depth and the right time well, I was surprised I was able to do it.”
How does someone get to be nearly perfect at CPR? For Holeton, it was practice. The longtime instructor has been doing CPR since she became certified in 1985. She was working as an X-ray technician at Rockford Memorial Hospital at the time, and her department needed a CPR instructor.
To become an instructor, “We had to have perfect CPR every time,” she said.
Holeton soon put her skills to good use as a volunteer paramedic with the Pecatonica Fire Department.
“They were short on (paramedics),” she said. “I was new in the community and felt a need to help.”
Her work with the fire department helps her appreciate the value of CPR knowledge throughout the community. She wants more people to learn the lifesaving techniques that emergency workers rely on when they respond to calls.
“I just want people to be prepared,” she said. “As (a paramedic), when I go on the scene, it really helps if someone there already knows CPR. The sooner you start CPR, the better chance you have.”
Now, she fills her days with work at Heart Solutions, a Machesney Park-based provider of CPR equipment and training. She teaches a variety of classes there, including CPR, first-aid and OSHA standards.
“We have anyone from nurses and (paramedics) to day-care workers and teachers,” she said. “I love teaching CPR and first aid. The thing that makes me feel good, is when a student comes back and tells me they used their skills to save someone’s life.”