911 Call Taker's Calm Voice Saves Mom's Life in Raleigh

Stephanie Schouten was headed to the emergency room when her heart stopped beating in the passenger seat of her family's car.

Her husband Joe had stepped inside for just a few minutes to grab a sweater. When he returned to their Raleigh garage, he found Stephanie unconscious.

"I immediately called 911, but I was extremely distraught," Joe recalls. On the other end of the line was call taker Mariah Friedrich, who would become the calm voice that saved his wife's life.

Mariah asked crucial questions and quickly determined Stephanie was in cardiac arrest. She walked Joe through pulling his wife from the car onto the garage floor and starting chest compressions.

"She instructed me what to do and kept me calm and focused," Joe says. For five or six minutes that felt like years, he performed CPR while Mariah stayed on the line.

Those minutes mattered more than Joe knew at the time. Every minute without CPR decreases cardiac arrest survival chances by as much as 10 percent, according to the American Heart Association.

Firefighters arrived and took over, rushing Stephanie to the hospital. Doctors placed a defibrillator to prevent future heart problems. Against odds that average just 1 in 10 for surviving cardiac arrest outside a hospital, Stephanie made a full recovery.

She doesn't remember passing out or much from those first frightening days. But once she recovered, one thing was certain: she needed to meet the woman who helped save her life.

A year after that terrifying Saturday morning, Stephanie and Joe brought their children Susan and Miles to the Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center. When Mariah saw them walk through the door, she could barely contain her emotions.

Sunny's Take

"I can't believe I'm meeting the person whose life I helped save," Mariah said, wrapping Stephanie in a hug. For call takers like Mariah, finding out what happens after those desperate phone calls is rare.

The reunion reminded everyone in that room why telephone CPR instruction training matters so much. Experts say it's the single most effective way to improve cardiac arrest survival rates outside hospitals.

Mariah's calm training and Joe's quick action gave Stephanie something precious: a second chance to watch her kids grow up, to celebrate ordinary Saturdays, to live.