Late last year, Bothell resident Chris Broderick told the Redmond Reporter the story went pretty much as follows.

A physical-education teacher at Redmond Junior High, Broderick had just started his class Nov. 6 when one of his students, Levi Pocza, 13, asked if he could get a drink of water.

“As he was heading for the water fountain, he looked really grey. There’s a curtain that divides the gym. He collapsed on the other side of the curtain,” Broderick said.

What followed was what Broderick called a team effort between himself and three other Redmond school officials. Though his heart stopped and he underwent CPR for nearly 30 minutes, Levi ended up with probably the best possible outcome from the incident, Broderick said, mostly because Redmond’s staff had the right training and the right equipment at their disposal.

Probably predictably, Broderick doesn’t consider himself a hero. But the American Red Cross of King and Kitsap counties honored him and the three others connected with Levi’s emergency treatment as “Everyday Heros” at a March 26 ceremony in downtown Seattle.

“The word ‘hero’ seems a bit much,” Broderick said, adding to him a hero is someone who risks his life to save someone else. “This was a group of guys that did the right thing.”

Besides Broderick, that group included another gym teacher, Mike Thomas; Redmond Junior High Principal Prato Barone; and football coach Scott Hagerman. Broderick said Thomas noticed Levi’s collapse and quickly called the other teacher over.

“I’ve been teaching kids for 11 years,” Broderick said, “and I’ve never seen anything like it. He (Levi) was blue.”

Broderick ran to the school office and yelled for someone to call 911. He then ran back to the gym, where Levi had no pulse. Along with Barone, he started administering CPR. It was the football coach Hagerman who arrived with the automatic external defibrillator (AED), which Broderick said probably made the difference in saving Levi’s life.

Since the incident, Broderick said he has learned that CPR doesn’t help in instances where the patient’s heart has gone into defibrillation or, essentially, spasm.

“It’s like a cramp,” Broderick said. “And a person’s heart, it’s stronger than you.”

With the leads from the AED hooked up to Levi, the device was able to diagnose the spasm and warn those giving CPR to move away. The machine then automatically shocked the youth, apparently stopping the spasm. The AED then told Levi’s rescuers to resume CPR, which they continued until medics arrived and even for a bit afterward.

“Much to my surprise, they told us to keep going,” Broderick said. Apparently feeling Broderick and his helper were doing a worthy job, rescue workers took the time to set up their own equipment.

Broderick’s story has a few more twists and turns. Levi ended up on a helicopter headed toward Seattle’s Children’s Hospital, a trip aborted when the youngster destabilized. There was a fairly radical procedure used to “freeze” the boy to lower his metabolism and give his heart a rest. There was contact with at least one former student — a student long since graduated — who helped spearhead the fund-raising effort that bought AEDs for Broderick’s school district. That effort followed an incident where a student suffered a heart problem like Levi, but ended up with serious, long-term brain damage.

Broderick said Levi will have a defibrillator in his chest probably for the rest of his life, but he otherwise is doing fine. Besides the good outcome for the youngster, Broderick said the best thing to come out of the incident is the opportunity it has provided him to spread the word about CPR and AEDs. And he still resists the “hero” label.

“That why I’m a teacher, because I care about kids,” he said.