By Clark Judge
(July 22, 2025) — When Pat Miller was told to “practice what you preach,” she must have been paying attention. A CPR instructor with the Killingworth Ambulance Association, Miller not only teaches her students how to save lives by cardiac resuscitation; she did save someone.
It was her father.
It happened approximately 10 years ago when Miller, who resided in Connecticut, visited her parents in Florida. Her Dad had been hospitalized with congestive heart failure but was expected to return home on a Tuesday. So Miller flew down to see him the day before, checked in on him that night and prepared to leave the hospital after he climbed into bed to retire for the evening.
But then he said he felt uncomfortable and “a little light headed.”
“And with that,” Miller said, “he stopped breathing. He coded, and it was obvious. So I started into my CPR training and eventually he was resuscitated. Needless to say, he didn’t go home the next day. But he survived it.”
Her father had suffered cardiac arrest, and, lucky for him, his daughter was there when it happened. An EMT with the KAA, Miller knew exactly what to do — quickly running through each step of her CPR training before help arrived and her father was revived.
“That’s what good training does for you,” said Miller. “It kicks in automatically.”
Miller’s story is a textbook illustration of the importance of CPR training. As she said, “You never know when you’re going to need it,” which is why she decided to teach the course every Tuesday of August and September, with Killingworth residents and those who work or worship in town admitted free of charge. It’s called a “Friends and Family” class, or what Miller termed “a less technical course” that will cover adults, infants, children, AED and choking training.
Expected to last approximately 2-1/2-3 hours per session, the courses will begin Tuesday, August 5, 2025 at the KAA’s Route 81 headquarters at 6:30 p.m. Class sizes are limited, but already ten individuals are registered for the opener.
“My goal,” said Miller, “is to get as many people as possible to know CPR because they need to know how to do it. There’s nothing more helpless than not knowing what to do in the event of an emergency when time is critical. That’s when it needs to become second nature for people.”
It was six years ago when my brother, Wade Judge, suffered cardiac arrest while working out one morning in a Chicago fitness center. Fortunately for him, an EMT exercising nearby knew CPR, and an employee at the facility knew how to operate an AED. It took them five minutes to revive him, but they saved his life. He was rushed to Northwestern University hospital where he lay in a coma for three days before opening his eyes.
Today he’s not only healthy; he suffers no lingering effects from the episode.
“There are too many things I’m thankful for to mention,” he said, “but the fact that I’ve been able to see four grandchildren be born and grow up is the highlight. I owe all of it to two people within the same building who knew CPR and how to use an AED.”
The American Heart Association’s CPR motto this year is “A Nation of Lifesavers.” Now you know why.
For more information about the CPR class, please contact Pat Miller at 203-314-3310.
Photo by Clark Judge
