Daily Herald opinion: A life-saving lesson: A Palatine teen’s training and heroics underscore the need to learn CPR

Serendipity certainly played a part in Rolling Meadows police Cmdr. Sam Mollenhauer surviving a near-fatal cardiac arrest this spring.

But before good luck put the right person in the right place at the right time, a middle-school class prepared an eighth-grader to do what too many of us cannot: perform CPR and — in this case — save a life.

Ethan Mollenhauer, then 13, was doing his homework at his family’s Palatine home on the afternoon of April 17 when he heard a crash. Moments later, he found his father, who hadn’t felt well that day, lying on the floor in an upstairs bedroom.

Ethan called 911 and began performing CPR, a skill he’d learn just weeks earlier in an elective course at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Hoffman Estates.

Here’s where the coincidences come in: Ethan only took the course, called Medical Detectives, because he couldn’t fit his first choice into his schedule. And he was home at the time only because school had let out early that day.

Even then, with Ethan’s aid, his father had only a 5% chance of survival, doctors told the family, as a result of a 100% arterial blockage that led to cardiac arrest. Without CPR before paramedics arrived, however, Ethan and his brother would have lost their dad and mom Kelly would have lost her husband.

“If he hadn't been in that class, this never would have had this outcome,” Kelly told our Charles Keeshan. “They don’t teach CPR to everybody. It's not in health, it's not in PE, it's only the kids who get in this class.”

Illinois mandates CPR training for high school students. It would be helpful, though, if more taught it at the middle school level as well.

Ethan’s readiness should be a call to all of us to learn CPR if we don’t know it — and to get a refresher if we do, since guidance changes over time.

Many hospitals and fire departments offer free or low-cost classes. Check with a village hall, local hospital or a nearby library to find one near you.

In addition, the Red Cross offers CPR classes at city and suburban locations, as well as online classes.

Ethan Mollenhauer has received a number of local awards for his heroics, but he doesn’t like dwelling on that day. But because of his quick actions Cmdr. Sam Mollenhauer returned to duty this week in Rolling Meadows. And, more importantly, he left a weekslong hospital stay earlier this year and returned home to his family.

Sam Mollenhauer is grateful for the paramedics, doctors, nurses and, of course, Ethan.

“In those moments, seconds matter, and everybody plays such an incredibly important role, and I'm just so grateful to all them for that, and obviously mostly grateful for my son,” he added. “He's definitely one of a kind.”

We join in the chorus of accolades Ethan, an incoming Fremd High School freshman, has received thus far. He’s earned them all.

But we should draw a critical lesson from what happened to the Mollenhauers on April 17. There may be a time when someone we love needs an Ethan to perform life-saving CPR.

With proper training, that person could be any of us.