UA Little Rock nursing students save man's life

Two first-year nursing students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock saved a man's life Friday at a North Little Rock gym because they were able to quickly administer CPR and give other life-saving help in the crucial moments before paramedics arrived.

Megan Crawley, 23, had gone to the North Little Rock Athletic Club on Friday, Jan. 11, to work out. She arrived at 10:45 a.m., just seconds after 67-year-old Charles Rainey collapsed. People were yelling for a doctor, and a man asked Crawley if she knew one in the building.

"I said I was a nursing student, and a man told me, 'You have to go! There's no one else back there,'" Crawley said.

Crawley ran over to Rainey and couldn't find his pulse. She saw that he was turning blue, checked his airway, and saw that his tongue was swollen and knew he wasn't getting air. She began giving Rainey breaths, while Jessica McCrary, the general manager of the Athletic Club, started compressions.

Ryan Ruff, another full-time UA Little Rock nursing student who works at the front desk of the athletic club, got an automated external defibrillator and charged it. He's also a medic in the National Guard.

"We put the pads on him and shocked him," Crawley said. "It [the AED] told us to keep doing CPR, so I started doing compressions, and Ryan did breaths."