Hero Preston cafe worker meets pensioner whose life she saved

Thirty-two-year-old Maureen Davenport was checking the tables outside Cherry Pie Coffee and Co in Preston Market last month when she noticed an elderly lady collapse in the street outside.

The former pin-up model had only returned from France and started work at the cafe weeks ago after deciding on a change in career, and said: "It's a good job I did have a career change. I was in the right place at the right time."

What happened?

Seventy-five-year-old great-grandmother Susan Seaton from Longridge had been shopping in Preston when she became unwell and collapsed.

Maureen said: "People were running over and I rang an ambulance right away.

"As I got closer I noticed she was gasping for air and wasn't responsive.

"I placed her in the recovery position and I was still on the phone to the 999 call handler at this point, so I told them her breaths were far apart.

"I've been around death quite a lot growing up, so I knew it wasn't good, and then she stopped breathing all together."

Maureen has taken CPR training due to a family member's cardiac problems, and when the call handler asked if she knew what to do, she "hitched the phone onto my shoulder" and began chest compressions.

Maureen said she was "in the moment" and doesn't know exactly how long she was doing the compressions for before an ambulance arrived.

She said: "It must have been five, 10 minutes, but it didn't matter, I just wanted her to live.

"I've done CPR on puppies before when my dog had a litter, but never on a person."

Paramedics asked Maureen to continue the compressions while they worked on Susan who had no pulse at that point, and just before they were about to shock her with a defibrillator, she took a breath.

Maureen said: "It was amazing, I was so happy.

"I felt emotional as she left in an ambulance but I went back to work and I tried to carry on and shut it off.

"I had no idea how she was until the ambulance crew came back and returned my Cherry Pie hoody that I'd put under her head.

"They told me I'd saved her life."

What happened next?

The following day, Maureen received an email from Susan’s daughter thanking her for her actions, saying: "The doctors said that without your fast response we would be looking at a very different scenario today."

Susan, who had a pacemaker fitted in hospital and is now recouperating well at home, met Maureen for the first time on Thursday as part of a Mayoral presentation to thank her.

She said: “I can’t remember anything that happened on that day, but I’m so grateful to Maureen and to the medics who helped me.

"It was fantastic to meet Maureen, she was lovely.”

Maureen, who hails from Darwen, added: "I've just said that I did what anyone else would do, but people have said that they would have frozen and not known what to do.

"Maybe it should be compulsory for us all to be taught CPR and life-saving skills."