If you vote for political parties who fight against poverty and war, and you demonstrate against war, you save lives.

At age 12, I saved my little brother, 9, when he fell through the ice. On the beach, little kids were screaming and useless.

"Are there oars underneath that rowboat?" I asked, quickly turning to Tony Salvaggio, 13, who lived there. "Yes," he replied. Tony was taller and bigger than me.

"Quick! Let's grab the boat and push it onto the ice," I said. "We can use the oars to push the boat to the hole where Lee fell in." Tony sprang into action. Off we went.

Meanwhile, Lee was weakly jumping up in the hole for a gulp of air, then sinking back under the ice. Rapidly tiring and freezing, Lee's heavy ice skates and wet jacket weighed him down.

"Tony, I'm going to lean over the edge of the boat and grab Lee," I said. "Counter-balance me, and hang onto the back of my pants. Don't let go!"

Leaning over the side of the boat, I reached underwater and grabbed Lee's jacket. Together we hauled Lee into the boat like a frozen lump.

Tony's mother called my mom. A registered nurse, Mom calmly grabbed blankets and drove five doors down to the Salvaggio's house.

At home, Mom put Lee into a hot bath. When Mom handed him a cup of cocoa, Lee's hands were shaking so hard he spilled every drop into the bath.

Here I am at age 12, with my sister Beth, 7. Echo Lake, Michigan.

And with my siblings on Lake Michigan. From the left: athletic Kathleen (me), 7, stinker Beth, 2, unathletic Lynne, 8, and hyper Lee, 5.

My nephew choked on a piece of food at thanksgiving when he was about one y.o. No one knew what to do including my brother. I had training in Heimlich. I gave some back blows and out the food came. It was a simple, not so complex, not so exciting story, but he wouldn't be here had I not been there.

Several times, but I am a nurse. This includes my ex-husband....oh well ya win some ya lose some. Never been thanked, never want to be. Also performed CPR unsucessfully which is awful.

Yes, about 2,000 times. I'm not kidding. My wife was type 1 diabetes and very brittle. That means she could go from high blood sugar to very low in a short period of time. She lost the ability to realize when she was getting low. many times I told her she was getting low but she would not believe me. i spent sometimes an hour getting her to drink sweet juice. Some times she was just catatonic , just not there but still resisting my giving her juice. The diabetes came with the territory and I was with her for over 36 years until she passed 2 years ago. She passed the way she wanted to, heart just stopped. And yes, I miss her terribly.

I've rescued 4 people from Mormonism...So yeah..

From somebody who's been saved but never been in a position to save anybody thank you all

I'm not real sure how to feel about this but, I saved my ex. It was in 2013. I kicked him out and moved to Denver in May. He came to Garden City and stayed with friends and after they kicked him out he stayed with my youngest son. When they kicked him out he moved to a hotel and my mother was paying for it. I was still in Denver during all of this. I fled Denver and went to my mother's in Lamar in the middle of August. After I got moved back to Lamar I came to Garden to find out what the ex was doing and if he had a job why wasn't he paying for the hotel himself. I think I made either two or three trips to Garden and discovered he had no job and had not left the hotel room since the day he checked in. He was not eating and was drinking very little.

One the next to last trip when I got back to Lamar I called Area Mental Health and they said I could have an appointment for today or tomorrow. No matter when you call you can have an appointment for today or tomorrow. So I made an appointment for tomorrow.

The next day I drove to Garden and made him get his ass out of that bed and get in the car. It took a good 30 minutes to get him up. I told him either he gets out of the bed under his own power or I'm calling an ambulance. I took him to AMH and their general assessment was he was a passive danger to himself and should be committed. He had to be admitted thru the emergency room so I took him over to the ER.

They made him go pee in a cup. It was one of the clear ones with the screw on cap. When he came out of the bathroom it looked like he had a cup of coffee!!! He was down to 115 pounds from a normal of 175. They made him spend 24 hours in a medical bed before they sent him to the Psych ward and he spent a full week in the Psych ward.

The doctor told me that if I had been just a couple of days later he wouldn't be alive.

So now the fucker stalks me.

Wow! I am impressed, seriously, I seldom encounter people truly prepared and willing to jump in to assist to such a degree. I know they are out there but often even people with training fail to step in for a variety of reasons. I won't tell stories because I have been in Emergency Services roles most of my life and take those experiences and skills where ever I go. But I love to see people step up and perform outside their usual roles. Thank You for your service, and thanks for sharing!

Twice in fact.. Last one was a woman drowning during a hurricane in Sarasota during the nineties.. Had I not been checking her out I may not have noticed...

I was a lifeguard at the lake and a small girls arm floaty got stuck under the dock and she couldn't get her arm out. Other kids didn't notice or help but I swam out to get her. I also had a saved a kid who dived in the shallow end and hit his head on the sand. He ended up with a stinger and was paralyzed for an hour or so. (Full disclosure I told the kid not to do it and he didn't listen so I wasn't very remorseful). I also saved my own life when I was choking on food. My brother and mom were in the other room watching tv and couldn't figure out what was going on. My mom flipped out and my brother was just in shock. I had to grab a chair and give myself the heimlich maneuver. After I got the food out and breath back I royally bitched at them and taught them all the heimlich maneuver and CPR right then and there lol.

Been in that situation a few times, once when I was only 15 and I was waiting for a friend and I guy came out of the house across the street with a roll of paper towel between his arms soaked in blood. He had just bought the house and the previous owners had given it a coat of paint to spruce it up before putting it on the market and they painted the old double hung windows shut. The guy had been trying to force the window open to air the place out and he wound up putting both arms through the glass resulting in very deep cuts but not spurting so he missed the arteries. My friend came outside with his girlfriend, saw the blood and vomited. The guy was really pale so I took the paper towels away and put the worst arm wounds in compression to stop the bleeding, then I got my buddy's girlfriend to do the same on the other arm which wasn't too bad and yelled at my friend to call 911. The ambulance was there in 5 minutes or so and by then the guy was fainting but they stabilized him and took him to hospital, the EMT said the guy would have bled out if he had kept the paper towels drawing out the blood from his wounds.
Another time I had a worker start coughing after he swallowed a bee that had gone into his can of coke and it stung him in the back of the throat on the way down when he took a drink. His foreman told the man to go back to work as it was his own fault for drinking a coke when it wasn't break time. I overruled the foreman as I was in charge of the site and employed his company to do work for me, drove the guy to the hospital and got him there just as his throat was closing up, a shot of adrenalin saved him although they did have to ventilate him for a bit. When I brought the worker back to the job site his foreman wanted to dock the man's wages, so I told him to either pay him for the day or pack up and get off my job site, permanently. The guy got paid but I never subcontracted work to that company again.

Had a couple, one was the usual swimming out to get someone who was swept out in a rip, then had a seizure in the water, not fun on my own I was 16. But a strange one about 10 years back. This woman was walking very close to the edge of a cliff, far too close, (I am scared of heights myself). She obviously wasn't watching where she was going and as I walked past she lost balance, somehow I managed to grab her hand as she went backwards. She gave me the nastiest look then looked behind her, started crying. She had not realised she was on the edge, just not paying attention.

I yelled to my husband before he stepped on a groggy rattlesnake trying to warm itself in the middle of a trail one chilly morning. He had long legs & always left me behind even though I hated it. Being the A-hole that he is, he ignored me at first when I just yelled his name--I was so panicked I couldn't come up with the word "snake" even. Finally I got him to at least turn around & see what I was hollering about. He was probably 3 feet from the snake by then. That pause gave the snake enough time to rouse itself & crawl away, finally rattling. He was lucky we had just started the hike & he hadn't left me far enough behind that I wouldn't have seen that snake lying there looking like a stick. If I knew then what I know now, I would have kept my mouth shut anyway.

Im a narcan administrator.
The Fentanyl death grip isnt a crisis...its a full blown APOCALYPSE.
Im the most heavily trained admin in Maple Ridge.
30% of the city's population use Fentanyl.
To date, I have saved 8 lives.
I do overdose patrols nightly.

Possibly; I was living in the lake district and there is a beating the bounds ceremony where the children make rushbearings with flowers in the rushes and take them to the church after walking round the parish with alll the bishops at the front singing the rushbearing song its back to the church for lemonade and gingerbread and school sports that include after all the races, a run up Helvellyn Fell .My partner and I went on ahead up the fell in order to cheer the kids on - a boy who was a severe asthmatic had decided against instructions that he would do it too and he collapsed at the top where we were - I managed to pick him up and bring him down - He was heavy and no one at the ground level noticed for a long time I got stuck at a large gateway with a stile at the bottom and also got stuck holding him even when other rescuers came - I sort of couldn't let go. he survived but it could have been nastier if we hadn't decided to run up the fell first.

Good going, she's so lucky you were prepared and knew what to do.

I've saved a few lives - I worked my way through college as a pool lifeguard, so I've had to rescue people that overestimated their swimming ability in a serious way, and I even had to rescue someone who was mentally handicapped (mid 20s) and whose caregiver directed them into the deep pool. This individual walked out into the middle of the pool where the water was well over his head, so I went in and was carrying him to the side while telling him to relax and he'd be OK. His caregiver at the side tells me, "Don't bother talking to him, he doesn't understand speech."

He put this person in this pool and didn't bother to tell any of the staff about his "condition". I suspect he was trying to find a way of putting his charge out of his misery in a way that would plausibly be called an accident.

I also spent several years volunteering as part of the First Aid Service Team for the American Red Cross - while that was mostly applying band aids and treating blisters at community events, there were a few incidents at events like the Rose Parade where we had to summon an ambulance to avoid having to call the Coroner.

I had a childhood friend that was suicidal, but she later sent me a hand-written letter thanking me for always being their for her, I’ve rescued a child and a drunk man from the lake and I helped a man whose truck lost control on ice and rolled into a ditch at high speed. All but the first thanked god for my helping them.

I would like to recommend two things that through my experience will be essential survival items.

1. A signal mirror. That is probably the fastest way to get a SAR pilots attention on the ocean or on the land.

2. A space blanket. Pick something that is extremely reflective and the color doesn’t belong in the ocean or the land. International orange traffic yellow are two great colors.

Both these items are small and pack easily.

If you are out on the ocean and have a boat I would recommend that you have an international orange stripe painted along the bottom. Every white cap from 500 ft looks like a capsized boat.

Bravo! Your calm thinking made the difference!

I saved a couple of my fellow hippies from drug overdoses in the 70's. I was likewise saved once by a calm thinking addict.

On 5 separate occasions, in my work, I've found prisoners in their cell with improvised nooses around their necks. At least twice I'm certain these were staged "suicide attempts" that got out of hand, the guy lost balance and found he couldn't get back up once his weight was on the noose and his air was cut off... the others I don't know for sure. Either way, it leaves you shaky afterwards knowing you were 3 to 5 minutes from finding a dead person.

On a happier note:

When my daughter was an infant, we had just brought her out of the hospital from what was supposed to be a routine checkup (she was 11 weeks premature and we had taken her home just a couple weeks before, after 8 weeks in intensive care) when her baby monitor went off, as we were loading her into the car seat. She had no pulse and wasn't breathing. My wife started infant CPR at the curb, since she was holding her already.

I stayed just long enough to see that she had things under control, then sprinted back in to the reception desk, and, as icy calm as I have ever been in my life (and I will never know how I did that), relayed the information: "infant female in cardiac arrest, at the curb by the front entrance, CPR currently underway by her mother, send an emergency team NOW." Then sprinted back to the car. Less than two minutes later a crash team arrived and took over. I was told later that they had never had anyone deliver emergency information so clearly and effectively, and between my (ex) wife and me we saved our daughter's life. She's going to be a high school freshman this year.

Actually yes 4 of them.

My stories are somewhat odd (two of them, anyway) in that I do not specifically recall the events, but was told by others I did these things. Also, in two of the events, I do not know with 100% certainty that my personal lack of action would have resulted in the demise of the individuals, but the absolute possibility was there.

The first instance occurred when I was a kid. The family, cousins, aunts, etc., we're at the beach and my little cousin got knocked over by a wave and dragged out a ways. I pulled her out of the surf and, so I was told, rescued her from drowning.

The second instance was applying the Heimlich maneuver to my friend's small son when he choked on a piece of hard candy.

Event #3 happened when I was driving a local thoroughfare, a very busy street, and noticed a very old woman wandering aimlessly down the sidewalk in a nightgown. As I recall now, she may have actually fallen, so I stopped to see if she was okay, and she appeared to be quite disoriented. Then a truck driver stopped, and together we got her to her feet and, discussing the situation, determined that she had probably walked out of a nursing home a couple of blocks back. So, we took her there and were confirmed in our deduction.

The last instance happened late one night as I was driving down another main road in another city. As I was about to go through an intersection, I noticed to my right that there was a vehicle in the middle of the road I was crossing headed away from the road I was on. I also noted that the car was stopped on a RR track, an active one. So, I went to a place where I could park safely and check the car out. Inside, in the driver's seat, was an individual who was barely responsive to my attempts to wake him. He was either drunk, or in a diabetic episode, I cannot, with absolute certainty, looking back, say which. At any rate, I was finally able to ascertain that the person lived in a house just a short ways down the road, and returned him to his residence and a very grateful wife. Again, I cannot say positively that I saved a life in this instance, but I like to think that may have been the case.

I prevented 2 people from killing themself. One I wish did...

You are the bomb Kathleen!!! Great shot!