As we go about our respective days, we never know when we will be called upon to save someone’s life. One minute, everything can be totally normal, but disaster can strike the very next moment.

A woman in Norman, Oklahoma was recently going about her day as she normally would when she suddenly found herself having to think fast to save the life of a college student. Leslie Hammons was driving past a local gas station when she noticed a young man hunched over the steering wheel in his car, with the driver’s door ajar.

Having just gotten CPR training, Leslie knew right away that something was wrong with the young man, so she took action. The man, who turned out to be college student Cooper McDaniel, had gone into cardiac arrest. Enlisting the help of some men at the gas station, Leslie got Cooper out of the car and started performing chest compressions on him. She later recalled how hard she fought to bring him back to life.

“Going through my head was my kids and Cooper’s parents,” Leslie said. “I was yelling at him, and I was saying, ‘Come on, buddy, you’ve got to live. Come on! Come on! Your  parents need you.’”

Cooper was rushed to the hospital, where he remained in a coma for days, and doctors diagnosed him with a heart defect. When he finally woke up days later, doctors told him that he would have died were it not for Leslie’s quick thinking and CPR skills.

“It was like a nice thing to do,” Cooper said. “I mean, I don’t think a lot of people would have done it, and I was just blessed that she was nearby.”

Kim McDaniel, Cooper’s mother, expressed her gratitude to Leslie.

“Leslie is a treasure. She’s a gem. She’s forever a part of our family,” Kim said. “Every event we have, whether it’s Christmas, or a birthday, or a graduation, or grandkids, it’s because of her and her taking action and noticing Cooper.”

“The fact that he stopped there, the event happened, and Leslie had the wherewithal to get him and to get help to get him out,” added Brett McDaniel, Cooper’s father.

God bless Leslie for thinking fast to save this man’s life!