As a Manhattan Beach junior lifeguard, Madisson Giese, 15, had learned CPR. But until recently, she’d never done it on an actual person. That changed during the late morning of Jan. 31.
Giese, who plays on the Mira Costa High School tennis team, was staffing the check-in desk at the Manhattan Beach Winter Junior Tournament at her school when she heard people start screaming.
One of the players, a 15-year-old girl, had fainted as she was switching sides with her opponent.
“I didn’t know what happened until I saw a girl passed out on the net post,” said Giese.
Giese watched, thinking the girl would come to.
“Her mom was doing mouth to mouth, but it didn’t look like it was helping,” said Giese. “I didn’t see her chest rising.”
Kevin Brady, the director of the tournament, asked the crowd if anyone was a doctor. No one answered.
“I said, ‘I know CPR,’ not thinking it would help,” said Giese. “The tournament director yelled, ‘Do it!’ So I went in and did it.”
Giese breathed into the girl’s mouth and pumped her chest. No response. She tried again. The girl started coughing.
“It was terrifying, honestly,” said Giese. “I’ve never been in a situation where someone’s life was in danger.”
The girl became conscious, although “she was still pretty much out of it,” according to Brady.
The group huddled around the girl until the paramedics arrived. After checking her blood pressure and heart rate, they took her to the hospital.
It wasn’t clear if Giese’s CPR helped the girl start breathing.
“I don’t know if CPR did that or not,” said Brady. “I just know it seemed like before the CPR she wasn’t breathing, she did the CPR and she started choking and did start breathing.”
The tournament continued a short while later.
Afterward, when Giese told her friends that they should do the junior lifeguard program, they resisted, but she pushed back.
“They were saying, ‘No, it’s too scary,’” said Giese. “I was like, ‘No, you need to do it. It’s very useful.”
“I definitely recommend junior lifeguards to anyone,” she said. ER
