Bensenville teacher saves choking student

Marco Bartolomeo was joking around and laughing with his friends Tuesday while eating ranch dressing flavored tortilla chips when, suddenly, he started to choke.

"I couldn't breathe, and my friends were thinking I was joking," said the eighth-grader at Blackhawk Middle School in Bensenville. "They were laughing until they saw my face turn purple."

That's when some students called over social studies teacher and lunch room monitor Gene Salecker, who used his Hiemlich maneuver skills to save 13-year-old Bartolomeo of Wood Dale.

Salecker, a former police officer, knew if someone isn't able to get air or make noise, there's a blockage.

He picked up Bartolomeo, moved him to the aisle and started pushing hard on his abdomen.

"His face was getting redder and redder," he said. "When all this was going on, I sort of blocked out all the noise and nobody else was there - just Marco and I."

Finally, on the fifth try, Salecker's Heimlich maneuver worked and Bartolomeo was able to breathe again.

That's when the roughly 230 other eighth-graders stood up and cheered.

"Everything came out good, and, of course, I would do it again," Salecker said. "My lesson is to make sure you chew before you swallow."

He said in his past five years of teaching, nothing of this nature has come up.

"I didn't care if I knew the kid, I just wanted to help him," Salecker said. "I'm just glad that instinct kicked in and I just did it."

At the time of the incident, Bartolomeo was really, really scared, he said.

"I actually thought I was going to die," he said. "I wasn't really expecting anything strange to happen that day. I don't really remember what was going on because I sort of just zoned out."

After the five-minute episode, Bartolomeo went to the school nurse and washroom, drank some water and finished his lunch.

As for those tortilla chips, he didn't finish them Tuesday and doesn't plan to snack on that brand any time soon.