Three C.O. teens help save a life: Bend Fire & Rescue focuses on learning CPR during National Heart Month

(Update: Adding video, comments from teens, Bend Fire and Rescue)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- It's National Heart Month, a reminder we share the importance behind learning how to perform CPR. Last year, Central Oregon teens helped save a life by doing just that.

"It's all about time," Petar Hossick, Bend Fire EMS training captain, said Wednesday. "So as your brain goes without oxygen, the minutes tick by, you get closer and closer to prolonged brain damage, and ultimately death."

February is American Heart Month, a time when people are encouraged to focus on their cardiovascular health. 

Heart attack symptoms can look different between men and women. 

For men, they can generally experience symptoms like nausea or vomiting, jaw, neck or upper back pain, shortness of breath and squeezing chest pressure or pain. For women, they experience those symptoms, along with fainting, extreme fatigue, and indigestion. 

According to the American Heart Association, more than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside the hospital each year.

And since time is of the essence, bend fire relies on the public to start CPR before they arrive. 

Hossick said, "Dispatch is great. They will coach you through that. We are lucky to have one of the top dispatch centers in the country here."

Last year, while on vacation, three local teens - Haydon, Logan and Zerikai, helped save a life.

Logan Buckley said, "There was some commotion down at the beach. We weren't really sure what was going on.

Haydon Hossick said, "We thought it was like a shark or something at first that everyone was like in awe about, because they were all kind of like just standing there, for the most part."

They all worked in the summer as bike patrol for the Sunriver Police Department, where they learned CPR training.  

A man named Luis was being taken out of the ocean and had drowned. The three teens helped to administer CPR to Luis, who regained consciousness.  

Haydon Hossick said, "To help save someone's life is very important. So I think it's a it's a must that most people should know how to do CPR training."

Buckley said, "You you never know when something like this is going to happen. It can happen at your place of work. It can happen at the gym, at the store or for us, it happened when we were on vacation."

To help save a life yourself, you can take free CPR classes the first Wednesday of every month at 5:30 p.m. at the Bend Fire and Rescue training center.