Man Saves Woman's Life Using CPR He Learned From The Office

I have long been convinced I can cross-clamp an aorta under pressure, thanks to the many episodes of ER I binged over the summer. This belief has only been amplified by recent news of an Arizona man who saved a woman’s life earlier this month by performing CPR techniques he picked up from The Office. Television is our only true teaching tool.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, on January 11, 21-year-old auto technician Cross Scott was test-driving a car when he spotted an unconscious woman in a stalled vehicle on the side of the road in Tucson. She was not breathing when Scott got to her and he didn’t have his phone, so, after flagging a couple other drivers for help, he broke the woman’s driver-side window and started to perform CPR. “I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life,” Scott told the paper. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

Thankfully, Scott was familiar with esteemed medical programme The Office. If you recall, in Season 5, episode 14 (“Stress Relief,”) Stanley has a heart attack, prompting boss Michael Scott to subject the staff to CPR training. The scene is, in fact, quite illustrative:

Scott (not Michael) used the scene for reference, thankfully cherry-picking the right parts:

The episode, where the gang takes an in-office CPR course, could actually be a tutorial in what not to do. The one thing it got right was using that song as a meter — the correct tempo for chest compressions.

As Scott straddled the woman and began chest compressions, he sang the song out loud. All he was thinking about was Michael Scott’s face, singing “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

After a minute, the woman took a breath and threw up. The women helped him roll her onto her side.

When paramedics arrived to transport the woman to the hospital, they told Scott his CPR compressions likely saved her life. (She checked out of the hospital shortly after she was admitted.) All in a day’s work at Dunder Mifflin!