TARZANA : Boy, 16, Lauded for Using CPR in Girl’s Rescue

School was nearly out, but something made Jeff Stauffer sit up and listen closely to the lessons on mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in his sophomore health class earlier this month.

“I really paid attention, because I wanted to be able to do it right. I had a gut feeling that I was going to have to use it sometime soon,” the 16-year-old Tarzana youth said.

“Sometime soon” turned out to be this week. In a quick-thinking act officials credit with saving a child’s life, the youth rescued a drowning 3-year-old girl from his apartment complex swimming pool and successfully put to use the first-aid techniques he had learned just a few weeks before.

“Something took over, like instinct,” Jeff said Friday. “I didn’t really think about it.”

He was lounging by the pool Tuesday afternoon, enjoying a piece of watermelon, the radio and the freedom of summer when he looked up and saw a little girl floating face-down in the water. It was 3-year-old Brittney Whitaker. His sister, Jennifer, had been baby-sitting the child.

“I thought she was just joking around,” said Jeff. But then, “I realized she couldn’t swim.”

Immediately he vaulted into the water and pulled the toddler out. Her chest was still, her face blue.

The training Jeff had received kicked in. Turn her on her side. Let the water come out of her mouth. Tilt her head. Help her breathe with a breath of your own.

“After about the third time, she started to breathe by herself,” Jeff said.

Paramedics arrived. An ambulance rushed Brittney to Tarzana Regional Medical Center, followed by Kathy Stauffer, Jeff’s mother, who had just pulled up from her office.

At the hospital, a nurse asked Stauffer how it was her son knew mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“I said, ‘He didn’t. He just faked it,’ ” said Stauffer, who had no idea what Jeff had learned in his health class. “She said no, he’s been trained somewhere because he did everything perfect.”

Jeff’s actions were so well executed that Brittney suffered none of the brain damage that can result from a prolonged lack of oxygen. At the hospital Wednesday, Jeff gave the girl a teddy bear, which she promptly named after her rescuer.

“He saved my daughter’s life,” said Katie Whitaker, Brittney’s mother. “Nothing I could offer him could ever repay that. I’m totally in debt to him.”

Her daughter is home now and doing fine, even asking to go in the water again, Whitaker said.

A spokesman for Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick said the city will commend Jeff for his level-headed actions at a ceremony next Friday.