School aide with CPR skill is a hero

FRIENDS FOR LIFE- White Oak Elementary School celebrates Mitchell Erlich Day last week in honor of instructional aide Mitchell Erlich. Last month, Erlich administered emergency CPR to Michael Santander, center, who suffered a heart attack while waiting for his grandchild after school. Santander's wife, Susan, applauds the occasion. Ehrlich said he had been trained in CPR by Marty Cohn during a staff development day. When Mitchell Ehrlich, a special education aide at White Oak Elementary School in Westlake Village, ended his school day Sept. 6, little did he know he would save a life and be declared a hero.

Ehrlich, a 59-year-old retired chiropractor, left his third grade class and noticed a man sitting on a bench.

"He just fell over," Ehrlich said. When the man's daughter screamed for help, Ehrlich checked the man's vital signs and found he had no pulse and wasn't breathing.

"I did what I was trained to do," Ehrlich said at last week's Las Virgenes Unified School District Board of Education meeting, where he was honored as a hero for saving the life of Michael Santander, the grandfather of a third-grader at the school.

Ehrlich said he applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a combination of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compression, for two or three minutes. Although an ambulance had been called, the school was jammed with parents picking up their children, and paramedics weren't able to reach Santander for 10 minutes, Ehrlich said. is a hero

Santander, who is known around the school as "Grandpa," had suffered a heart attack. After arriving at the hospital, he underwent surgery to implant a pacemaker.

"He's doing fine," Ehrlich said. "It was a pretty scary thing for me," he said. "We were very blessed."

"Mitch does us proud very day," said White Oak Principal Abbey Irshay.

Ehrlich received a commendation from Superintendent Sandra Smyser and a hero's acknowledgment from the school board, White Oak officials and his friends and family at the meeting.