Tim Doherty nominated for Pride of Australia medal for saving woman’s life with 20-minute CPR effort

TWENTY minutes of CPR performed in the pouring rain have lead to a life being saved and a Pride of Australia Award nomination for Roseworthy man Tim Doherty.

TWENTY minutes of CPR performed in the pouring rain have lead to a life being saved and a Pride of Australia Award nomination for Roseworthy man Tim Doherty.

Tim, 20, was driving from his home to work at Salisbury a month ago in pouring rain when he saw a car ahead veer off the road, hit a guardrail and come to a halt.

Realising something was wrong he pulled over, ran through the rain and found a woman slumped over her steering wheel.

“I checked for a pulse and there was nothing there, she was gone,” he said. “I dragged her out, chucked her over my shoulder and ran under the bridge and started giving her CPR.

“I’d done a first aid course so it was kind of instinctive — I knew I had to do something and they tell you doing anything in this situation is better than nothing — so I worked on her for a while then ran back to my car to ring for an ambulance.

“I worked on her for about 20 minutes and about two minutes before the ambos arrived she started breathing. She latched onto my arm which gave me a real shock.

“I was absolutely buggered and soaked by this stage so went home to get changed. There were a stack of missed calls from my boss asking where I was, but when I told him what had happened he was fine about it.

“The whole thing kind of scared me, but I knew no-one else was going to stop in the rain so I had to do something.”

The ambulance officers later rang Tim to tell him the 68-year-old woman was doing well, although she was nursing four broken ribs which may have been from the CPR.

Tim, a former plumber who now works at RM Williams, had previously performed CPR on a 73-year-old man who was the victim of a road accident but the man did not survive.

While Tim modestly said he just did what needed to be done, his mother Karen, who nominated him for a Pride of Australia Award for Outstanding Bravery, said he was a hero.

“While Tim was doing CPR on the lady a lot of cars slowed to see what was going on but not another person stopped to help — it takes a special kind of person to step up when needed and Tim is special,” she said.

“Tim received a phone call at work from the hospital from the family to say how grateful they were for what he had done for them. Tim visited her after his shift and she was still quite out of it but her husband said to Tim ‘you are my hero’ and I am a very proud mum.”