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CANDIA, N.H. (WMUR) — A Dunkin’ employee helped save a man’s life Wednesday morning when she performed CPR on him after he collapsed at a Candia rest stop.
Surveillance video shows David Wood, 29, of Tennessee collapsing in front of his truck. Another trucker saw what happened and called 911.
A customer in the Dunkin’ drive-thru told employees what happened, and April Merchant, 24, ran outside.
She and two men pulled Wood out of the snow and onto a blanket. He had no pulse, and she performed CPR on him for several minutes before police arrived and took over.
Wood was taken to a hospital and is recovering.
Felicia Bertram, David Wood’s mother, flew up from Tennessee to be by her son’s side. She’s calling Merchant a hero.
“Even the doctors said if she had not done that, he would not be with us,” Bertram said.
A picture of Wood shared by his mother shows him smiling in his hospital bed. Merchant said she got to meet his mother, who gave her a big hug and thanked her for saving her son.
“She gave us our family,” Bertram said. “He has three beautiful children, a beautiful wife, and I don’t know what I would’ve done if I lost my son.”
But Merchant is reluctant to call herself a hero.
“I don’t know about all that,” she said. “It makes me anxious when people call me a hero, because I just don’t feel like I am.”
She said the CPR class she learned in college kicked in when she ran out to help Wood.
“I took a class a long time ago, probably about six years ago,” she said. “I just remembered a lot from it. It was really helpful.”
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