Madison Atkinson, 15, is being held with high regard for her heroic act of performing CPR on a toddler to save her life after she almost drowned on Thanksgiving.
Atkinson, the JV cheer team captain at her school, learned her CPR skills in a sports medicine class. Video footage obtained by Today showed the incident at the Atkinson’s California family home on Nov. 23. The teen’s relative, three-year-old Maxine, made her way through the backyard and into the pool. Approximately four minutes later, the uncle found the toddler face down, floating in the pool.
“She was pretty much lifeless,” Madison’s mother, Kirsten Atkinson, told Today.
After hearing her uncle scream for help, Madison came to the rescue and began CPR, her mother said. She described Madison as remaining “calm, cool, collected, not panicked” throughout the
process. Madison said her focus was on remembering what to do when performing CPR.“I was just like, let’s get this baby alive — no one else knew CPR,” she said.
“Madison’s just pumping away for a couple of minutes, and finally, Maxine starts to open her eyes and start to breathe,” Kirsten told the outlet. “The dispatcher said, ‘Put her on her side.’ And when we did that, Maxine opened her eyes and starts to literally breathe on her own.”
The first responders praised Madison for her heroic deed.
“You know, she has performed a miracle,” they said.
“We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving in a different way, right? It was about, you know, how precious life is and how things can change in the blink of an eye,” the teen’s mother said as she credited her daughter’s actions for giving the whole family a lot to be thankful for that day. According to the outlet, baby Maxine has fully recovered, and the eye-opening experience has led the entire family to pursue CPR training.