COLDEN, N.Y. (WKBW) — At the Colden Country Inn, 15-year-old Cody Atwater’s boss affectionately calls him a ceramic technician, but when Cody clocked in for his shift on November 9, he had no idea he’d be doing much more than rinsing off plates and silverware.
“Nobody really knew what to do, and everybody was looking at me. So I said I’m with the Hillcrest Fire Department, and I know what to do,” Atwater said.
During that Monday night shift, Cody noticed a man hunched over with his wife.
“Nothing really registered, so I went up into the kitchen and sat everything down and somebody came up and screamed call 9-1-1,” he said.
The man had passed out.
“When we laid him down on the floor. His heart was stopped. It wasn’t beating. He was not breathing,” he explained.
And no one except for Cody could bring him back to life.
“Everybody just looked at me and I started CPR,” he said.
For 10 to 20 minutes, Cody got down on his knees and performed chest compressions.
“I remember his chest was just like a bowl of Jello. It was just very challenging to keep going,” Atwater said.
But he knew he had to. And because of Cody, that man is alive and well today. And Cody feels like he can breathe a little deeper.
“I’ve been really happy. I feel a lot better than I have in a long time,” he said.
Cody is now encouraging anyone who hasn’t already been trained in CPR to go out and do so.
“Because you never know what’s gonna happen,” Atwater said.
A humble hero who was truly in the right place and the right time.
