DUBLIN, Ga. — When it's Cinco de Mayo, some people celebrate and go out for food and drinks. Thissy Boone and her husband Eric were doing to stay in but decided to go to their favorite restaurant, La Michoacana #2.
The nurse with over 20 years of experience felt like something was wrong and couldn't eat. She says it felt like a "nervous, jittery feeling" and she couldn't shake it. That's when she noticed people gathering at the table behind them huddling around Kay Dennis, who was choking.
"She was looking at me and I had noticed that she had been kind of looking around -- didn't know at that point that she was going to save my life," Dennis said."
Boone's nurse instincts kicked in.
"All of a sudden I got up, went over there, and started doing the Heimlich Maneuver," Boone said.
The Heimlich Maneuver is a first-aid mechanism used when someone is choking. It is also known as abdominal thrust, "used to treat upper airway obstructions by foreign objects."
For more than a minute, Boone was helping Dennis and was getting worried she would pass out.
"So I yell across the room, probably the loudest I ever yelled, 'Somebody call 911!' Lo and behold, she says,' I'm OK, I'm OK,'" Boone said.
They both breathed a sigh of relief, and Boone says she couldn't even finish her meal, so she went home. 24 hours later, her neighbor Mary Walker came over.
"I had went to a funeral in Jacksonville, got back and I was feeling lightheaded," Walker said.
Walker drove almost 3 miles down the street because she "needed a nurse" to check her blood pressure.
Both Boone and Walker live in the Dexter area and Fairview Park Hospital is about a 15-minute drive away, so, using her nursing skills, Boone took Walker's blood pressure, which she says was high.
"220 over 119, and I'm thinking, 'We're a little long ways from Fairview, we got to get going,'" Boone says.
On their way to Fairview, Boone starts asking her random questions which helped calm her breathing down. They admitted Walker, and doctors said if she had waited any longer to get help, she would've had a stroke or heart attack.
Looking back at both incidents, Boone says she can't believe it. She says people should step in and help in any way they can for someone in need.
"My motto is kind of, 'Do what you can, while you can, for who you can,' and it just happened that I was able to," Boone said.
Dennis says throughout her experience, she noticed everyone staring at her at the restaurant and saw the good Boone did for her as a perfect place and perfect time.
"I know God puts people where they need to be at the time they need to be there," Dennis said.
She was one person who was there for two who all say Thissy Boone is not just their hero, but their "she-ro."