RAYTOWN, Mo. — What started out as a trip to take a driver’s test, ended up with a trip to the hospital for one woman after she collapsed at the Driver Examination Office in Raytown. The family of 43-year-old Lorraine Jones is calling two workers there heroes for their quick actions.
“She just basically stopped talking during our conversation and that’s when she collapsed,” said Chichota Watson, who works at the Driver Examination Office.
She says she was talking to Jones about what her son needed to do in order to get his permit.
“I was like ‘what is going on?’” Watson said.
“I went to catch her and helped her to the ground,” said Zachariah, Jones’ son.
“He kept saying, she has heart problems,” said Watson.
“I just thought that this couldn’t be happening,” added Zachariah.
Watson yelled for someone to call 911 and called out to her co-worker, Jurrell Vance.
“She said ‘I don’t think I feel a pulse,’ she said ‘feel for a pulse on your side,’” Vance said.
She couldn’t find one either, so she started administering CPR on Jones.
“I was keeping her airways open because she had labored breathing, so it was very hard for her to breathe, and her tongue was falling to the back of her throat,” said Watson.
Zachariah called his grandmother to tell her what was happening.
“He was so upset that I couldn’t understand what he was saying,” said Marjorie Mitchell, Jones’ mom.
Someone else got on the phone and told Mitchell her daughter had stopped breathing.
“I was like, we can’t lose her right here in front of him,” Watson said.
It just so happens that Watson, Vance, and the rest of the office employees were all re-certified in CPR just last week.
“It just paid off, it was good that we had the refresher course, because yesterday we needed it,” said Vance.
Vance was right, the training did pay off.
“She started breathing for a brief moment,” Vance added.
Jones came to, and an ambulance took her to a local hospital.
I just couldn’t thank them enough for helping my mom, I just couldn’t help them enough,” said Zachariah.
“Just in a day’s work, I mean, that’s what we’ve been trained to do, it definitely makes us feel good,” Watson said.
“God bless you, and God put you in that position to just have renewed your CPR training,” Mitchell said. “One of the doctors here told me later her heart stopped, that if she had not received immediate CPR, that she would be dead.”
Jones was still at the hospital in critical condition on Friday evening, but her family says she’s on the road to recovery.
