Airman helps save boy’s life

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OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. (AFPN) --  When Master Sgt. James Gunderson volunteered to chaperon his youth group’s field trip to a local lake July 17, he thought his biggest worry would be making sure the children did not get sunburned. But before the day was over, the Air Force Weather Agency sergeant helped save the life of a 4-year-old boy.

There were no lifeguards on duty at the recreational lake, so Sergeant Gunderson stood about 35 to 40 feet from the water and kept an eye on the group. He constantly scanned the water and counted heads to make sure everyone was accounted for

Sergeant Gunderson said something in the water caught his eye. He realized it was a small boy floating face down in the water. He said he watched the boy for a second or two to see if he was OK.

“In a moment like that, you hope that he is just playing some sort of game,” said Sergeant Gunderson, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the agency’s national intelligence community weather branch.

Unfortunately, it was not a game.

Sergeant Gunderson approached the boy when he noticed that he was indeed not moving, grabbed him and then turned him over.

“He was blue, and he wasn’t breathing,” the 20-year veteran said.

As Sergeant Gunderson ran to the beach with the child, he shouted for someone to call 911. He said a million things were racing through his mind.

“You ask yourself, ‘Do you remember CPR?’ And then everything just kicks in,” he said.

Fortunately, one person his group was an emergency medical technician and another was a trauma nurse. The pair began to perform CPR. Sergeant Gunderson said he helped keep the crowd out of the way and tried to locate the child’s mother, who was not with his group.

It took several minutes to get the small child breathing again, Sergeant Gunderson said, “but it felt like forever.”

The child was eventually flown by helicopter to a local hospital for further evaluation and was released the next day.

Sergeant Gunderson said that he had a hard time sleeping that night.

“The ‘what-if scenarios’ just kept going through my head,” he said as he visibly shuddered.

When asked how he feels about his new “hero status,” Sergeant Gunderson denied that he did anything heroic. He said he had “the easy part,” and was just at the right place at the right time.

Sergeant Gunderson’s branch chief, Maj. Dan Edwards, disagrees.

“He is a hero,” he said. “If he hadn’t been there, done what he did, that child very easily could’ve died.”

The major credits Sergeant Gunderson’s quick action to the training all Airmen receive.

“We are taught situational awareness everyday, whether it is with the mission, antiterrorism, or in this instance, saving a child’s life,” Major Edwards said.