13-Year-Old Makes Valiant but Futile Effort to Save a Life

An elderly Tierrasanta woman died Sunday, despite the efforts of a 13-year-old girl who performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation while receiving instructions over the telephone from a 911 dispatcher.

Jessica Dale, whose father is a radioman on the aircraft carrier Independence, was selling magazine subscriptions near her home in the Murphy Canyon military housing complex at 3:20 p.m. when she knocked on the door of a house on Fino Drive, a San Diego Fire Department spokeswoman said.

Jessica heard the television on and looked through the screen door to see a 76-year-old woman lying unconscious on the floor, the spokeswoman said. The woman’s name was being withheld pending notification of her relatives.

Jessica said an 8-year-old friend with her became frightened and ran home, but that she went inside and called 911.

“I thought she had just passed out, so I patted her hand to try and wake her up,” Jessica said. “But she wasn’t moving . . . “

With the emergency dispatcher instructing her, Jessica said, she pulled a piece of apple from the woman’s mouth and performed CPR, which she had never done before.

“She wasn’t breathing and she was bleeding (from striking her head when she fell) and tangled in her walker, so I couldn’t get her turned over right away,” Jessica said.

Paramedics and police arrived two minutes later and took over the life-saving efforts, but the woman, who regained a pulse in the ambulance, died of cardiac arrest at Sharp Memorial Hospital, the spokeswoman said.

Paramedics were so impressed with Jessica’s maturity and calm behavior in performing CPR that they nominated her for a Fire Department lifesaving award, the spokeswoman said.

“I’m still shaking,” Jessica said six hours after the incident. “I was thinking only about trying to help her.”

Jessica’s mother, Mary, said she was not surprised by her daughter’s actions.

“She is very assertive and aggressive and eager to help,” Dale said. “I told her God wanted her to be there for a reason, to try to help that woman.”

Jessica, who attends Gasper DePortola Junior High School, was visibly shaken when police took her home after the incident, but Dale said the kind words of police, paramedics and the elderly’s woman’s daughter and grandson, who also is a paramedic, had reassured her daughter.

“I think she needed to know that she did her best,” Dale said. “She is very upset the woman died, but she knows she did all she could.”