‘I just saved a guy’s life’: Teenager urges people to train in first aid after she saved a man from choking at work
A teenager who saved a man’s life when she found him choking at the restaurant she works at is urging people to do a first aid course, as it “might take up your weekend, but it can save someone’s whole life”.
Millie Lockwood, 16, is a St John Ambulance cadet and had been representing her group at her local Remembrance Day parade in North Yorkshire in November 2024 on the day she saved a man’s life.
She arrived to work late – “because the Remembrance Parade never finishes early!” – and was immediately called to action by her manager as a customer was choking on his dinner.
Following the incident, she says she can’t emphasise enough the importance of getting first aid trained.
“You need to do a first aid course, you need to know…” Millie told PA Real Life.
Millie joined the St John Ambulance cadets, a youth group for young people aged 11 to 17 at which they learn vital first aid skills alongside taking part in community activities, four years ago, because all of her friends were involved and had told her “it’s really good, and you learn how to help people, and get to know people as well”.
Little did she know that that decision would end up being the difference between the life and death of a stranger, when she was the only first aid-trained person available when crisis struck.
Millie arrived for her shift at the restaurant where she works last November and found her auntie, who is also her manager, shouting: “Where’s Millie? Is Millie here yet?”.
“I walked through the door, and I looked to my right, and this guy was choking,” Millie recalled.
“I didn’t say hi to anyone. I just went into this whole different world. I went over to him and I was asking him all the questions, like: ‘Are you choking?’
Millie performed back blows to try and dislodge the food blocking the man’s airway, but these were unsuccessful. T
he next step was to perform abdominal thrusts, also known as the Heimlich Manoeuvre, which involves standing behind the person choking, forming a fist with both hands beneath their ribcage and pulling the fist sharply inwards and upwards, to force out the blockage.
“He was a big guy, he was muscly, and I’m five foot three, and I knew I wouldn’t get my arms around him,” Millie said.
“So there was a man in the queue, and I was like: ‘Look, I’m going to tell you what I need you to do, but please can you help me?’
The man from the queue performed the abdominal thrusts, and the patient, a man in his 40s, brought up “some of the food, but not all of it,” Millie said.
“We continued to do it, and he ended up bringing all the food up. And then he started talking to us.”
“Obviously I was trying to calm him down, the guy that I just stole out the queue, and then his wife as well,” she recalled, and the man’s wife even hugged Millie and thanked her for saving his life by knowing first aid.
The teenager said she was almost stunned by what had just happened, and she found it difficult to process that she’d just saved a stranger’s life with her training.
“Everyone was like: ‘You’ve just saved someone’, and I didn’t understand,” she said.
“(From) performing the back blows, to asking someone to perform the abdominal thrusts, to then saving him so he wasn’t choking anymore, it was all so fast. It was all in the space of about five minutes, but it felt like two seconds.”
This incident was the first time Millie had put her first aid skills to practical use in a real-life situation by herself, and she says she felt “a mix of emotions” afterwards.
“I was so happy,” she said.
“Inside I felt like: ‘Oh my God, I’ve just saved someone’, I was so happy about it. But then there was also a part of me that was thinking of the worst case scenarios.
“Everyone at work was like: ‘But you’ve just saved him’. I was like: ‘But if that had been different, how would I have dealt with it?’ So it was two-sided.
Now, Millie is more determined than ever to encourage people to take a first aid course.
“I tell my family all the time: It’s a little course that might take up your weekend, but can save someone’s whole life,” she said.
St John Ambulance is running a campaign this September, titled Save A Life September, during which they hope to inspire 300,000 members of the public to learn vital first aid.
In fewer than 30 minutes of training, people can learn how to treat choking, severe bleeding and cardiac arrest by attending volunteer-led demos and watching online videos.
As for Millie, she has just completed her GCSEs and is planning to go to college this September to study health and social care.
Her time with St John Ambulance has inspired her to go into pre-hospital care when she finishes her education.
“I’d like to be a paramedic,” she said.
“And I would like to escalate that up and work with Yorkshire Air Ambulance.”
For more information on first aid training with St John Ambulance, visit sja.org.uk/save-a-life-september.