FORT WALTON BEACH — Lunchtime nearly turned tragic Thursday at Edwins Fine and Performing Arts School.
Third-grader Ayden Cady was sitting with his friends and had just taken two bites of a corn dog when he realized something was dangerously wrong.
“I hiccupped all of the sudden, and then I went to the cafeteria to tell the ladies and I couldn’t talk,” Ayden said Friday morning.
Patricia Owens expected to see a child behind her grabbing a snack when she turned from the cash register. What she saw was much more serious.
“All he did was just grab his throat and I was like, ‘Oh, no! He’s choking,” Owens recalled.
She starting to perform the Heimlich maneuver on Ayden as her co-worker, Amanda Reed, took off for the front office to get help. After squeezing him three times, a piece of food came from his mouth and Owens breathed a sigh of relief.
See how to perform the Heimlich maneuver »
But it didn’t take long to figure out all was not well, and cafeteria manager Chiqueda Douglas quickly wrapped her arms around Ayden’s abdomen.
“It seemed like I did it forever and nothing came out,” Douglas said. “He was just turning blue and I just thought, ‘Oh my God.’ ”
That’s when Ellen Powell, who is known for being calm in stressful situations, took over and dislodged another piece of food.
“I just always think that God just always puts us in the right place,” Powell said. “You just have to step in when you have to.”
The women thought everything was OK, but Ayden was still choking.
Principal Cheree Davis then stepped behind him and gave him one more quick, hard squeeze.
A large piece of corn dog shot of Ayden’s mouth. After a few seconds, the staff realized the immediate danger had passed.
“My son definitely would have died if (the employees) had not been there,” said Ayden’s mother, Jennifer Vaghayeanegar. “This was my worst nightmare. It really was.”
After it was clear he was OK, Vaghayeanegar said they talked about what happened.
“He was scared when he came home,” she said. “He didn’t want to eat.”
It took several hours to coax him to eat, but by Thursday evening he was his old self, she said.
He returned to school on Friday and said he was doing just fine.
“No bruising or anything,” Ayden said.
Life also was back to normal for the cafeteria staff. Each marveled how well everyone assumed their roles, including the new school resource officer who got paramedics to the on the scene almost immediately.
“It was just one of those instances where you go into fight-or-flight mode, and everybody went into fight (mode),” Davis said.
As to lunch Friday, everyone agreed that Ayden would eat pizza.
“I told him ‘you’re no longer allowed to have corn dogs,’ ” his mom said.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.