MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Kris Sanderson called 911, begging for help.
Her partner of 15 years, Paula Russell-Sanderson, stopped breathing during an asthma attack. Russell-Sanderson was turning blue.
Angela Presley, the dispatcher who answered the call Aug. 8, was still in training, with her trainer listening in.
In a calm, deliberate voice, Presley directed Sanderson to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or “CPR.” Medics were on the way, she said.
Russell-Sanderson, 52, spent weeks in the hospital, including time on a respirator. Doctors told her that without the immediate CPR, she likely would have died in the six minutes before help arrived.
On Wednesday, the couple visited SNOCOM, the emergency dispatch center serving southwest Snohomish County, to meet Presley and thank her. They hugged the stranger and they all cried together.
The couple also have been encouraging their friends and family to take classes in CPR. It’s become their mission, they said.
Sanderson, 48, had taken CPR training years before, but she was rusty. She remembered working on the dummy in the class, but she always figured the skills might help a stranger on the street — not someone she loves.
She stepped out of the room Wednesday while dispatchers played the tape of the 911 call. It was too difficult to hear her own voice in those terrible moments.
Russell-Sanderson doesn’t remember much between when she was clutching her inhaler and calling for Kris and when she woke up in the hospital and heard her wife talking to her.
Her voice is still hoarse from the breathing tube.
She cried Wednesday as she heard the fear in her partner’s voice on the recording.
Sanderson was imploring her to live.
“Stay with me Paula. Stay with me, girl. Hold on with me,” she said. “I’m breathing for you, baby. I’m breathing for you.”
Moments later, Russell-Sanderson’s chest began to rise and fall. She was breathing when the medics arrived.
Sanderson later contacted SNOCOM Executive Director Debbie Grady. She wanted to find out who the dispatcher was, so she could send her flowers.
That’s when she found out the woman on the other end of the line was new on the job.
The trainer, Stephanie Gamm, had been there the whole time, within arms’ reach of Presley, offering guidance.
After Presley got off the phone with Sanderson that day, she waited for her lunch break to cry.
Dispatchers rarely find out what happens to the people they talk with, Presley said. It’s their job to stay calm no matter what they’re feeling.
“We just have to have faith that we did everything we could possibly do for them and go on to the next call,” she said.
The couple still talks about what happened. The gravity of it becomes clearer as time passes and it sinks in, Russell-Sanderson said. She feels like she has to think about it a little bit at a time, to process each piece.
On Wednesday, Russell-Sanderson turned to Presley, the dispatcher, and held her hand.
“You did a real good job,” she said. “Thank you.”
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com
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