‘It’s OK honey, I’ve got you.’ Lexington educator honored for saving choking student.

About a month ago, a student approached Lexington’s Liberty Elementary School paraeducator Beth Brockman in the cafeteria with a frightened look on her face.

Brockman said she realized the special needs student couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t speak “so I asked her if she was choking and she indicated she was.”

Brockman stepped behind the student, and wrapped her arms around her as she had learned in annual safety training, then explained to the student that she was going to press tightly and quickly and not to be afraid.

“I said, ‘It’s OK honey, I’ve got you,’ Brockman recalled. Brockman said she performed the Heimlich maneuver, a first aid procedure used to treat choking , three times until something came out of the student’s mouth.

Brockman kept a cool head, remembered her safety training and leapt into action when a student was in distress, Fayette County School district spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall told school board members as she presented Brockman with an award at Monday’s monthly meeting .

The student was immediately able to speak, cough and breathe. Brockman took the student to the school nurse who determined the child was OK and then contacted her family.

As a special education paraprofessional at Liberty Elementary, one of Brockman’s job responsibilities is to help students with special needs in the cafeteria, Deffendall said.

“I am so proud of Beth,” Liberty Elementary Principal Lisa Kear said in a statement, “and am so grateful she was calm and had the wherewithal to remember the procedure so well. I think she is a hero!”

Brockman said that she has been a paraeducator for Fayette County Public Schools for 20 years. In addition to Liberty, she previously worked at Northern and Deep Springs elementary schools.

“It’s just like I’ve told everybody, ” Brockman said about the praise she received. “if you were in that situation, you would have done the same thing.”