Brooklyn Teacher Performs CPR on Apparent OD Victim

March 15, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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BROOKLYN (AP) — A Brooklyn schoolteacher is being hailed as a hero after she performed CPR on a suspected drug overdose victim during her lunch break.

Cassandra Bird-Scolaro had just ordered lunch on Wednesday at a restaurant near her school, P.S. 17 in Williamsburg, when she found an apparently lifeless woman in the bathroom.

Bird-Scolaro told the Daily News that the woman had no pulse and looked dead.

The fourth-grade teacher said she immediately began performing CPR. Emergency medical workers arrived minutes later, and the unidentified woman started breathing. She was taken to Woodhull Hospital. Her condition was not known Thursday.

Bird-Scolaro was one of 11 staffers at her school who volunteered for CPR training,

Her principal, Robert Marchi, said Bird-Scolaro represents the very best of what a teacher ought to be.