Senior Noah Dembo entered Fit for Life on Evans Street on Monday, Oct. 12 with the intent to perform his usual nightly workout routine, unaware that he would walk out of the gym a hero. Dembo was in the midst of his workout near 10 p.m. when he first noticed a frequent gym goer lying face down and motionless toward the middle of the gym floor.

     “He was in a push-up position, [so] I thought he was about to do some push-ups, but I saw that his glasses were broken and his face was bleeding a little bit,” Dembo said.

     Now concerned, Dembo approached the man, only to discover the worst.

     “He wasn’t breathing, so I checked his pulse and he had no pulse; or I thought he was dead,” Dembo said. “I called this guy over and we turned him over and then I called the police.”

     Taking quick action to address the dire situation, Dembo began to perform CPR.

      “It’s pretty hard to do CPR so I was sweating a lot,” Dembo said. “I was probably doing CPR for ten minutes, and then this other guy took over for a couple minutes before the police got there.”

   Dembo's mother has heart disease and as a result he has become CPR-certified several times in the past few years. Although he had only ever performed CPR on the training mannequins, he felt that he was fully aware of the gravity and intensity of the situation.

     “I was in shock - I’ve never seen someone have a heart attack, but when we got his pulse going again, I could sort of take a deep breath,” Dembo said. “Before that I was just freaking out; I was just thinking that if he dies, it would indirectly be my fault.”

     However, this did not deter Dembo from addressing this life-or-death situation in an efficient manner, and he is grateful and surprised at his response.

     “I’m proud of myself I guess because I wouldn’t have thought that I would have done something about that, but in the situation I ​

did,” Dembo said.

     Dembo later learned that the individual was a 39-year-old male, who had entered into a state of cardiac arrest. However, Dembo is not fearful of these high-intensity predicaments. He has sworn in