2001 Winner
Jamie Baxter
Eight-year-old Jamie Baxter knew exactly how to save his mum’s life when she collapsed in a coma before his eyes.
Jamie rang 999 – then made his pet dog Barney bark like mad to try to keep her conscious.
Office manager Yvonne, 44, thought she had a bad case of ‘flu as she struggled to cook dinner one evening at her isolated cottage home in Seaton’s Sluice, Northumberland.
She soldiered on because her husband Steve, 42, an account manager, was away working and she was alone in the house with her young son.
Yvonne took a penicillin tablet, believing it would fight off her cold. In reality, her brain was being attacked by viral meningitis and the penicillin had sparked a potentially-lethal allergic reaction.
Within minutes, she was slumped semi-conscious and Jamie was his mum’s only hope of survival.
With amazing presence of mind, he used skills he had learned in an after-school first aid class to check Yvonne’s pulse and breathing and pushed her gently into a recovery position.
Then he called 999 and listened calmly as the operator told him his mum had to be kept awake until the ambulance arrived or she could choke on her badly-swollen tongue.
First, he called his dad and then his grandfather Jim to calmly say: “Mum’s really ill. Can you come round?”
Then, he stroked Yvonne’s face and kept calling her name to keep her conscious.
When he realised his mum was still slipping away, Jamie remembered the sound she hated most in the world — the barking of the family’s 11-year-old Tibetan terrier, Barney.
Jamie rang the doorbell to send Barney into a barking frenzy and the dog’s yaps repeatedly dragged Yvonne back from the edge of unconsciousness until ambulance paramedics arrived.
“I didn’t know whether my mum was going to live or die,” Jamie told them.
“I just knew I had to try to make her all right.”
As she recovered in hospital, Yvonne described her son as “my little hero.”
She said: “My husband always tells Jamie that he has to look after Barney and I when his dad’s away.
Jamie did the most amazing job of taking care of me. He saved my life.”