Joshua Doucette, 6, says he “didn’t do anything special” when he orchestrated the rescue of his grammy last weekend after she blacked out at her Veazie home.
But Fern Little disagrees.
“I am so proud of him. He’s my hero. He’s my little man,” Little, 52, said Tuesday, a day after her release from the hospital for treatment of a heart problem that caused her to collapse about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
“I hate to think of where I’d be if he had not been here, playing and visiting,” she said during an interview at her Hobson Avenue home. “I truly believe in my heart if it had not been for him, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Joshua said Tuesday that he and his little sister, 2½-year-old Maddison Doucette, were spending the night at Little’s home when he heard a loud thump in the kitchen and his grammy call out to him.
When he went in the kitchen, he found Little on the floor.
“I tried to press the button on her Lifeline but my fingers weren’t strong enough,” he said. He said he called out to Little’s housemates, Paul and Karen Devore, who are her best friends and his unofficial aunt and uncle, and told them to call 911.
He then turned on the lights and unlocked the doors so emergency medical personnel could get in, put Maddison on the couch and tucked a blanket around her so she wouldn’t be cold when help arrived, and tucked a pillow under his grammy’s head and patted her cheek, telling her everything was going to be OK.
Little said that the Devores were on a different floor of the three-story house they share and that both are hard of hearing. Given that, it could have taken far longer to get her to the hospital.
Joshua’s mom, Samantha Hamel of Milford, said Tuesday she’s proud of her son.
“I lost it crying. It made me feel very overwhelmed that I raised a little boy like that. And I have never, ever been as proud of my 6-year-old little boy as I am now. A mother’s always proud of their kid, but when they do something like this it’s amazing,” said Hamel, who rushed to the hospital as soon as she learned of her mother’s collapse.
Joshua clearly was paying attention when he watched his mother and the Devores take care of Little when she has blacked out in the past. He also was paying attention to what his mother has been learning in the certified medical association program she is near completing at Beal College.
“He’s very interested in what I’m learning, so I’ve taught him a lot of things,” she said. “But for my little man to actually succeed and fulfill in saving his grandmother, it just totally amazed me.”
On Tuesday, Capt. Pete Metcalf of the Veazie Fire Department stopped by Little’s home to give Joshua a certificate in recognition of his calm, cool handling of his grammy’s medical crisis.
Metcalf, who was one of the Veazie and Orono emergency medical professionals who was called to Little’s home last weekend, said he personally has seen only a “handful” of cases in which a child was credited with saving a life in his more than 20 years in the public safety field.
Thanks to educational programs that start shortly after children enroll in school, “It’s not uncommon for kindergarten-age kids to know it’s OK to call 911 in an emergency and what’s an emergency and not an emergency,” Metcalf said Tuesday during a shift at Veazie’s firehouse.
Despite his elevation to hero status, Joshua is a typical 6-year-old boy who enjoys math games and playing on the playground at Dr. Lewis S. Libby School in Milford, where he is in first grade.
Asked what he wants to be when he grows up, Joshua sighed and rolled his eyes slightly.
“I’m only 6,” he said.