Woman Chokes in Restaurant

MAGNOLIA PARK -- Lunchtime diners looked up one day last week when

Rev. Tania Kleiman asked for their attention as she prepared to give

waitress Libby Stacy a bouquet of flowers.

Kleiman was expressing gratitude to Stacy for saving her life.

While having lunch with some friends at Frank’s Restaurant on Olive

Avenue May 27, Kleiman began choking on a piece of meat. Stacy quickly

came to the rescue, performing the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge the

food.

“I thank God I’m still alive,” Kleiman said. “If she wasn’t here, I

could have died.”

Her friends didn’t know what was going on. “I thought she was having

an asthma attack,” said Helen Marshall, one of Kleiman’s lunch companions

that day.

Stacy, who knew that the wheelchair-bound Kleiman was choking, sprang

into action. Although she had never formally learned the Heimlich

maneuver of inward and upward abdominal thrusts, she nevertheless got it

right. “I just don’t know how I did it,” she said. “It was just that I

saw it on TV. When it was necessary, it just came.

“When she was going on the floor, the Lord just helped out.”