ROANOKE — Less than 24 hours ago, two-year-old Samantha Schuchman was playing in the back seat of her pregnant mother's car.
Then her mom, Robin Schuchman, began to sense something was going terribly wrong; Samantha had turned blue and was frothing at the mouth.
"I just happened to look back and she was seizing," Schuchman said.
Desperate for help, she pulled over on State Highway 121 and began flagging traffic.
“My heart was just sinking that all these people are just driving by and not stopping," Schuchman said.
And witnessing it all in the back seat: Baby brother Thomas and 10-year-old big sister Kaylee.
“I was actually kind of scared," Kaylee said. Who could blame her?
But Kaylee quickly found her mom's cell phone and called 911. She even remained calm when the ambulance took Samantha and her mother away to the emergency room.
"It tore me up to leave my kids in the car, but she's a good helper," Schuchman said as she remembered watching from the ambulance window.
Police drove Kaylee and Thomas to safety. Amazingly, Kaylee never flinched. Instead, she consoled her younger brother.
"I was hugging him; I was squeezing him just about to death!" she said.
Schuchman calls her 10-year-old a hero.
“I think it’s actually kind of exciting, because I've never actually been a hero like that before," Kaylee said.
Out of the multiple cars that passed Schuchman in her moment of need on Highway 121, three Good Samaritans actually stopped and assisted, but only one woman — described as about 5'-5" tall with dark hair — stayed with her and her family until help arrived.
Schuchman is hoping that woman will come forward, because they never got her name to tell her thanks.
Meanwhile, everyone in the family is back home and in good health.
E-mail sgables@wfaa.com
