A Dallas-area nurse is being hailed as a hero for rendering aid to a fellow member of a potential jury pool who took ill in a courthouse last month.
Katherine Kreis, who has been a nurse for over twenty years, arrived at the Frank Crowley Courthouse in Dallas, Texas on June 27, in response to a summons for jury duty. She and about a hundred other people gathered in the Central Jury Room to find out whether they would be selected to sit on a jury.
However, while waiting her turn, Kreis noticed the man sitting next to her begin to exhibit signs of medical distress.
“I was sitting in the waiting room, waiting to be called, and I happened to notice the gentleman next to me was shaking and threw his phone,” Kreis recalled.
The man then began convulsing, and witnesses reported that someone shouted that he was having a seizure.
Kreis knew just what to do.
“At that moment, I got up and went over to him to help stabilize and make sure he wasn’t going to injure himself,” Kreis said.
“I’ve been a nurse for about 20+ years now, and cardio-thoracic surgery, cardiac telemetry, neuro patients, seizure patients, those are my kind of patients,” she added.
Other members of the potential jury pool helped lay the man safely on the ground while a bailiff called 911.
The man is said to be recovering well from the episode.
Kreis also works as a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas, Arlington School of Nursing, so she has lots of experience rendering emergency medical aid. She noted that the unnamed man had on him a list of medications and a list of emergency contacts, which helped her and other emergency medical professionals assess his condition and alert his loved ones.
Kreis believes that divine intervention may also have played a role in the sequence of events that led up to that day.
“I think I was supposed to be there for that reason. I’ve never been summoned to jury duty before so it was my first time to do that,” she said. “And I wasn’t real sure what to expect, and I really feel like it was a right place right time kind of thing.”
Several judges and court staff members have since honored Kreis for her act of service, giving her a plaque and flowers to commemorate her good deed, which got her out of serving on the jury.
She hopes to be called to jury duty again some day.