- April 24, 2024
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Video of Dan Roberts giving the Heimlich maneuver to a guest went viral, getting 10,000 views in about one day.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
By the time Dan Roberts, 28, realized that a patron was choking, the man had already been without air for nearly a minute.
“I looked over,” Roberts said. “Didn’t even think twice.”
A former Daytona Lagoon lifeguard, Roberts is a lifetime Ormond Beach resident who’s worked at Buffington’s Bar & Grill, at 500 W. Granada Blvd., since it opened, in April. He never had to use his life-saving skills at the waterpark, he says. But when he saw someone choking in the restaurant, it was all instinct.
“Nobody pointed out that there was a crisis,” Roberts said. But then another server saw what was happening. The guest, who owners Josh and Chris Buffington were unable to identify, was flailing his hands in panic.
Roberts jerked the man out of his chair, performing the Heimlich maneuver. He cleared his airway. But the man blacked out and, still, he wasn’t breathing.
Roberts kept jerking, forcing bursts of air up from his lungs. That’s when, finally, he felt his chest expand.
His lungs were working again, but the man went limp, unconscious. Roberts rested him on the floor.
“You got to give me a thumbs up, man, or we’re not stopping,” Roberts told him, when the man became responsive. And a thumb rose toward the ceiling.
Aside from his part in a group he and his friends made up when they were little, called the Mini Police (yes, they carried homemade badges), Roberts never had big dreams of being a lifesaver. He took the job at the waterpark to make ends meet. It was close by. It made sense.
But now, Roberts, who is engaged to be married and is a new father, is glad he was able to make a difference.
“I’m just kind of grateful I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I was the only guy on the floor that’s sort of big enough to throw this guy around a little bit.”
He said he’s had friends and family step up several times throughout his life when he needed help — everything from offering car rides to lending him money.
“So I’m happy I was there to be able to lend a helping hand,” he said. “Pay it forward.”
After the ordeal, when color returned to the man’s face and the inside of the restaurant got noisy again, the man sat down and finished his steak sandwich.
“It was crazy and amazing at the same time,” Josh Buffington said. “When we asked him about his meal as he was leaving, he replied, ‘It was great — except for that first bite.’ ”
Surveillance video of the event was posted on Facebook the day after, Nov. 6, and within 30 hours, it had gotten 10,000 views. CLICK HERE to watch.
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