PEABODY — A high school student who suffered a seizure after a track meet earlier this month has Peabody Veterans Memorial High School’s Trinity Cabrera to thank for her life-saving actions.
Cabrera, 17, was honored at a Peabody School Committee meeting Tuesday with a citation from Mayor Ted Bettencourt, jr. because she had successfully delivered life-saving first aid to a seizing student after a track meet on Tuesday, May 11.
On the day of the track meet, PVMHS coach Marcus Vieira stood among nearly 120 students in the Field House when a scream for help rang out. He and coach Scott Myers ran toward an underpass, below which they saw a student collapsed on the ground, shaking. Before Vieira or Myers could react, Cabrera had already cleared the area, and began delivering first aid that she had learned in her nursing class only two weeks prior.
At the school committee meeting, Vieira said that he was amazed by how calmly and effectively Cabrera responded to the situation,
“Trinity has been excelling in her nursing and emergency rescue programs at our school when me and the athletic trainer came back, Trinity told us how long the athlete had been down, she shifted the body properly, and was just reacting perfectly and was ready to give the proper diagnosis to our trainer,” Vieira said. “I was already proud of her for her athletics, and then as a human being to see her react to something that was happening. To see a 17- year-old do something like that, it’s probably the proudest I’ve ever been of anything. To do something like that, and then to see her compete afterwards was just amazing.”
When coaches began trying to put their fingers in the seizing student’s mouth, Cabrera said she told them to stop, and instead, followed her training and instructed her coaches on how to appropriately assist the student.
“I was assessing the coaches on what to do, just so that everyone’s safe, and then, basically, you’re just supposed to let the seizure happen until help arrives, and that’s what I did,” Cabrera said. “The coaches were trying to place their fingers in his mouth, cause there’s a myth that they’re gonna hurt their tongue or bite it, which isn’t true. You’re supposed to just let the person seize.”
Cabrera said that despite her success in nursing and emergency care, she does not plan on becoming a nurse full-time. Instead, the student sees herself pursuing a career in a lab.
“I would like to be a nurse on the side, but for my main career, I want to go into the lab and test things. I like that stuff,” Cabrera said.
Along with training from her educators like Shannon Spinosa, Cabrera credits her mother, a nurse, for her instinct to help others.
“My mom’s a nurse, so I basically look up to her. She taught me most of her ways, which is that when someone needs help, you’re supposed to help them. She taught me that,” said Cabrera.
Spinosa said that she’s not only proud of her student’s heroic act, but sees it as an example of her program’s success.
“She was able to act in a calm, efficient manner and deliver the skills that she needed to and be very knowledgeable and be able to control the situation so nicely. We are very very proud of her for that,” Spinosa said. “She’s a great representation of the program, of the students in the program, and how it affects the community and everybody in the community.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected].