
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 12, 1995                   TAG: 9508140061
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By PATRICK LEE PLAISANCE NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                                 LENGTH: Medium

LESSON STICKS IN TEEN'S MIND AS MEAT STICKS IN MOM'S THROAT

Jennifer Belevan learned all kinds of important tips about being a good baby sitter last Saturday: How to diaper a baby, how to stop a nosebleed, how to get children out of a burning house, how to save choking moms.

Choking moms?

Three days after the 13-year-old learned how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a choking child as part of a baby-sitter preparation class, her mother, Anna Ferreira, panicked during lunch when a chunk of turkey blocked her esophagus. Unable to breathe, she began trying to slap herself on the back to dislodge the food. It didn't work. That's when Jennifer sprang up from watching television.

``I wasn't panicky,'' said the seventh-grader. Then she pauses. ``Well, sort of.''

Recalling what she did in class three days earlier, Jennifer stood her mother up and pressed her abdomen as she held her from behind.

``It just popped to me,'' Jennifer said about the procedure.

And out popped the turkey.

``It was weird,'' the girl said. ``I never did it before, and I didn't know if it would work.

``This class, if I didn't take it, I don't know what I would have done.''

But Mom knows what would have happened.

``I was proud of her for what she did. That class helped her save my life.''

Jennifer's instructor, Carmen Fonzille, said she was ``flabbergasted'' when she found out about the incident - especially because Fonzille spends about 30 minutes of the daylong class teaching children how to save infants and older children from choking.

``I still have chills. Thank goodness she was in my class,'' said Fonzille, noting that the class time she spends on the maneuver is nowhere near the six-hour training required to become a certified performer of the maneuver. Fonzille has the children in the class, who are ages 11 to 14, practice on dolls. A different maneuver is required to save a choking infant, but she said the same procedure used on adults can be used on preteen children.

``Out of everything I show them, I tell them this is the one thing you may really need one day,'' said Fonzille.

``But it's overwhelming to find out a child used it.''

by CNB