Late Monday night, while snacking on a piece of bread, Robin Emery started choking.
Her daughter found her on the floor and started trying to give her the Heimlich maneuver. Her partner called 911, and then tried to help her himself.
“They tried so hard to perform the Heimlich maneuver, and I knew it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t getting any air,” Emery said in an interview.
“Everything went dark – really dark.”
Emery’s daughter told her she had started foaming at the mouth. In that moment, Emery says, she believed she was going to die.
That’s when Const. Andrew Jackson of Waterloo Regional Police showed up.
He had already been in the neighbourhood when the call came in, and Rob Cooper – Emery’s partner – says his arrival felt like it was less than a minute after the 911 call.
“(He) took control of the situation,” Cooper said.
“If it had been 30 seconds longer, Robin wouldn’t be here today.”
Emery says she was not fully aware of what was happening by this point, but she remembers hearing “a whisper” from Jackson.
“I remember hearing ‘I’m going to hurt you, and I’m so sorry – but if I don’t do this, you’re going to die,’” she said.
After that, she remembers being jerked back and forth as Jackson tried to dislodge the bread. Within a few moments, she was able to breathe again.
Paramedics showed up a few minutes later and took Emery to hospital to be checked out.
Cooper says what he’ll remember about the night isn’t just how a police officer likely saved his partner’s life, but how he responded late when they thanked him.
“(He said) ‘It’s all part of my job,’” Cooper said.
Reached by CTV News on Wednesday, Jackson expressed the same sentiment.
“It’s my job,” he said.
“I’m just glad that I was in the right place at the right time.”
With reporting by Stu Gooden
