Three Landing Trail Intermediate School students are being lauded for their courage and quick-thinking for saving a woman suffering from a stroke.
The boys – 12 year-old Lucas Isbister along with Trayton Noskiye and Emmery Gilks, both 11 – were walking to the skate park Apr. 5 around 8 p.m. when they saw a middle-aged woman sitting on a nearby rock.
As they walked by, they waved at her and Noskiye heard her mumble, “Call 9-1-1.”
The boys walked over to find out what was going on and she told them she was having a stroke.
Isbister, who is in Grade 7, remembered what his dad taught him about recognizing the signs of stroke, so he asked the woman to raise both her arms. She could only raise one.
“Lucas thought really quickly and told us to call an ambulance,” recalled Gilks, who is in Grade 5.
Isbister ran over to the Husky to phone 9-1-1 while Noskiye and Gilks waved down cars for help.
Pat Langton was driving down the east hill on his way home that night.
“There was a couple of boys on the road waving. I thought they were just goofing around so I kind of kept going, but I pulled into the parking lot because I saw they were still waving and another car had pulled over,” he said.
The boys relayed to Langton and another couple what had happened and waited together until an ambulance arrived.
“The woman was in rough shape,” Langton recalled. “She said she was there for the better part of the day. I don’t know if she was confused. I just think if the boys weren’t there, she could have froze to death.”
Langton was so impressed with their actions that he wrote a letter to LTIS principal Glen Finney about wanting to recognize the boys for their courage and their good thinking on the spot.
“I’m just so proud of those boys. It was probably scary for them to come up to someone they didn’t know,” he said.
The boys received more high praise from Finney at a school assembly last Wednesday.
“They did something that made a difference in their lives and also in the life of that person,” he said to the packed crowd in the school gym.
“In our last assembly, we talked about how we could all have a voice and we could all do something. We thank them for their decision to do the right thing.”
Each of the boys was called up and received a Domino’s gift card from the school and an A&W gift card from Langton.
Isbister thought back to the moment when he took action and remembered the lessons he’s learned from his dad.
“You never know when it’ll come in handy,” he said.
“If I was in trouble,” Langton said, “I’d want them to be the three there for me.”
