NYPD School Safety Officer Tamara Jenkins now has a friend for life.
The 21-year-old Brooklynite is being hailed as a hero after she stopped a 9-year-old girl from choking to death.
“It feels good,” Jenkins said about her Heimlich maneuver save at Public School 241, the STEM Institute of Manhattan, on Wednesday. “It was more instinct…I did it before with my little brother.”
Jenkins was monitoring the W. 113th St. school near Frederick Douglass Blvd. about 11:50 a.m. when she noticed a commotion at a table in the school lunch room.
As she got closer, she noticed that a fourth grader, Layla, was choking on a small orange.
“She just peeled it and put it in her mouth,” Jenkins explained. “Everyone started screaming because she was choking and running to pick her up.”
“She was hunched over the table and a staff member was talking to her, but she couldn’t speak. Now I knew it was serious,” she said.
It only took Jenkins a few compressions to get the orange out.
“Everyone was so excited and happy. The principal was in tears. They called me a life saver, but I was just doing my job,” Jenkins said.
Try telling that to her new shadow, Layla.
“Layla just started hugging me,” Jenkins said. “The next day she told me that she told her mom and her mom was crying. Even the next day, she was hugging me.”
Attempts to reach Layla’s family were unsuccessful.
Jenkins has been with the NYPD’s School Safety Division for about a year.
“When I had put in my papers for the (School Safety Division) I had no idea it would happen this fast,” Jenkins, who wants to be a police officer said.
“God has been good to me,” she said.
