It is every teacher’s hope that his or her teaching will have an impact on a student’s life. It is rare that the impact is as great as the impact of United Hatzalah Paramedic Yanki Ehrlich. Yanki is a well-known and widely respected paramedic in Har Nof where he lives and teaches emergency first aid. Over the years the alumni of his emergency first aid/CPR class has grown to include Pesach (age 12) and Moishie (age 14) Bagaad. It was an emergency call on Katzenelenbogen street that brought the teacher and students together outside the classroom.

Pesach and Moishie were in the car with the father on the way to school when they noticed a crowd of people gathering on one of the street corners. Sharp-eyed Moishie noticed a prone figure on the ground in the center of the crowd. “Dad, stop the car” he yelled as he jumped from the vehicle. Pesach quickly followed. Moishie began to check for signs of consciousness just as they had been taught. Pesach asked if anyone called for an ambulance. Realizing that no one had done so, he grabbed his father’s mobile phone and gave a concise and accurate description of the incident to the dispatcher.

The intrepid duo got in sync, with Moishie at the head giving ventilations and Pesach doing the chest compressions. 200 meters away their teacher, United Hatzalah Paramedic Yanki Ehrlich, also bringing his kids to school, got the alert. When he got there, he noticed his 2 students performing a textbook case of CPR and urged them to continue as he prepared his advanced life support equipment. His portable defibrillator/EKG monitor indicated a shockable arrhythmia as the apparent cause of the otherwise healthy 45 year-old person’s collapse. Warning his star pupils to step away from the patient, Yanki administered a lifesaving shock. Yanki then began administering a rapid course of heart medications as the 2 students continued CPR with the help of a passing physician.

When the ambulance arrived, the driver asked the children to step aside. That is when Yanki explained to the ambulance driver that the kids he is addressing actually saved this person’s life and if he wants any further information about the case he can direct his attention to the pint-sized lifesavers. Yanki caught up with his star pupils at Hadassah Medical Center where they had gone to visit the man whose life they had saved. Yanki noted that he has had students who have saved lives before, as in the infamous case when the terrorist plowed his black BMW into a crowd of soldiers. There one of his students applied a tourniquet and pressure bandage onto 2 severely injured soldiers. This however was the first time that he actually got to see his students in action and work with them. He gives them an A+.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)