(applause) - I'm so proud of you.
I'm a mom of an 18 year old as well,
Your 17 but I'm just saying I'm
so proud of you, what a cool thing.
Tell everybody what happened.
- I cheer for Rockwall High school
and we have an annual homecoming parade,
and so we were on the homecoming parade,
and we were about I want to say 300 yards
away from the final destination
which is the Utley Stadium, and we share a football float
with the football players so we are the very last float,
And the football players are yelling at me,
"Tyra, Tyra some kid is choking."
And I'm looking in front of me but of course there are
one hundred plus people in front of me
so it was very difficult to spot the little boy out
and so we keep traveling for about, 20 more yards, and
I see a mom holding up her little boy in the air
and she was screaming, "help, help, my son is choking."
And his face super red, he's turning purple.
It's very obvious that he can't breath,
and so I immediately jump off the float
and I run down to him.
I grab him from the mom, and I say, "hey I got it."
And I grabbed him, I tilted him downward, I gave him.
- You grabbed, your a seventeen year old girl
grabbed the baby from the momma and said, "I got this."
- [Tyra] Yes, yes.
(audience laughter and applause)
- Okay, keep going.
(audience applause)
- I grab him from the mom, I tilt him downward,
and I gave him three good back blows, and he ended up
spitting up everything he had.
- Yeah
- And I stood him up and made sure he was okay,
made sure he was breathing, and then at this point
the paramedic came over and was like, "hey you good?"
Checking his breathing, his eye sight,
and then I fixed his hair and I asked him, "you okay?"
He was super freaked out, he was crying but.
- I bet it freaked him out.
- Yeah it freaked him out but basically
I made sure he was good and I ran I jumped back on the float
and the parade continued.
(audience laughter and applause)
- You're like, your good right?
All right I'm going to do this again, like it's just
like a day that ends in Y for you that's cool, okay.
Um, Phillip you have a scary story about,
right a moment like this.
- My daughter when she was a little bit younger
she swallowed a quarter one time and we didn't know it.
- Oh my god.
- And then my wife
who's my superhero, she didn't
hesitate and reached in with her finger and got it. Karen,
- I was watching and I can totally relate
to the mama of this child
because you freeze when it's your child.
I was watching Phillip
and I was like, okay I gotta remember I know CPR,
I know the Heimlich, I'm gonna step in in a second.
But mama bear Becky she had a long fingernail and she went
and I don't know if you're supposed to do this
but she did it.
Cause she was just like I'm getting that quarter out
of my baby's mouth.
And she flicked that thing and it went flying out
and we were all like, "Oh my Gosh."
Phillip was running around like crazy.
Crying, crying, yes.
(audience laughing)
- I mean
- Acceptable
- Acceptable, its fine.
Grown men cry.
Um, how did you know what to do?
You're seventeen, I just wanted to remind you. Yeah.
(audience laughing)
- So my mom she worked at a group home.
She's a foster parent, and so
- [Kelly] That's awesome.
- It is required that I'm CPR certified,
and when I was in eighth grade I had a friend of mine
choke on a granola bar, and I had no idea what to do
and that was really frightening for me so from that point on
I knew that I would not want to be in that position again.
And so I told my mom that day and from that day
she taught me the Heimlich maneuver, the back blows, and
and whatever you needed to know
just in case a situation came up
like that.
- You have a great mama.
- Yes I do.
(audience applause)
- Yes, praise your mama. Wow.
What was it like in school the next day?
- Exciting as soon as I walked in the doors at school
a woman I didn't even know congratulated me and thanked me,
and I was like oh my gosh,
and she thanked me and was like you did an amazing thing
and then all throughout school
I mean people were coming up to me all day.
How was it? You're the town hero.
Like you did an amazing thing.
And of course all the titles were great but to know that
the little boy is okay which is probably the most rewarding.
- Yeah.
I love you! Oh my gosh. You're like every mom's dream kid.
So you talked to the mom afterwards right.
- Yes we were reunited with them and that was really
great because from the of course during the incident
I didn't get a chance to talk to the mom
or the little boy so when I reunited with her it was
really great.
She thanked me and I talked to the little boy.
He's super sweet, super fun.
He's an amazing little boy.
And that was really great for me.
- That's a really cool thing you did.
So you graduate soon, right?
- [Tyra] I do.
- What are you wanting to do?
Are you going to be a doctor? I should say you should be
a doctor at this point.
- Yes, I want to attend a university in Hawaii.
Then go through that and go to straight to medical school
and then--
- [Kelly] You do, you wanna be, yay, you want to
go to medical school, cool.
- Yes, and yes and throughout that journey I want to end up
being a pediatric surgeon.
- That's amazing!
(audience applause)
- I'm gonna ask your mom for parenting tips.