When Stephanie Crespo began choking on a frozen strawberry from her ice cream, her nine-year-old daughter Isabella did not freeze. The schoolgirl had seen a YouTube short showing the Heimlich manoeuvre, and she put it into practice to save her mother's life.
Stephanie, a 42-year-old IT worker from Phoenix, Arizona, had often told Isabella to stop watching YouTube. But after the incident, she admitted she was eating her words.
Footage shows Stephanie desperately signalling for Isabella to bring her water bottle before dropping to her knees, trying to cough up the fruit. Isabella rushed over with more water and calmed her screaming six-year-old brother Matteo, telling him "it's fine".
Then she pressed her mother's belly, performing the Heimlich technique she had learned online. The piece of strawberry eventually came up, ending the scare.
Isabella, who remained remarkably calm, later explained: "I felt pretty calm - I did know what to do. I pressed my mom's belly helping her to breathe. I saw what to do on social media - everything just pops up."
Her mother recalled the moment she realised where her daughter had learned the skill: "My first question to Isa was 'Where did you learn how to do that? How did you know how to do that? Immediately she said YouTube."
A mother's fear
Stephanie described the terrifying sequence: "As I was eating [an] ice cream, I started choking on one of the frozen strawberries. I got up from the couch because I couldn't breathe so I was trying to cough it out." She went on: "Isabella was on the other couch and her reaction was tremendous." She added: "It was extremely scary."
Stephanie said: "I didn't know how to point it out to my kids that I have something in my throat. I kept hearing Matteo screaming and crying and going desperate but not doing anything about it, but Isabella was in charge of the whole situation."
The ordeal lasted only about a minute, but Stephanie said it felt like an eternity. She is now urging other parents to teach their children what to do in a similar emergency.
"It's scary to think what would have happened if Isabella hadn't known what to do and she hadn't intervened," she said.
A proud mother
"I was extremely proud of my daughter - it was something that was unbelievable," Stephanie said. Isabella also encouraged other children to learn the technique. "I calmed Matteo down a little bit and after everything when the choking hazard was finished we continued to eat the ice cream but my mom didn't finish hers," she recalled.
She added: "It's something other children should be aware of as well because what if their parents are choking and there's no one to help?"
The family, from Phoenix, Arizona, now has a very different view of YouTube.
