Auburn woman advocates for CPR after reviving coworker

Marissa D’Arpino believes everything in life happens for a reason.

To her, it was more than a coincidence that she got a call from her part-time job at American Eagle the morning of Saturday, Oct. 27, asking if she could come in that day. D’Arpino, who is from Auburn, arrived at the Destiny USA store around 9 a.m. for her four-hour shift. A couple hours went by, like any normal day. Then, she said, employees started running around the store, and it was suddenly clear that something was wrong.

“The store manager ran out from the break room,” D’Arpino, 23, recalled last week, “and she yelled, ‘I need somebody to do CPR, Kayla is having a seizure!’

“I grabbed her arm and I said, ‘Do you need me to do it?’ and she said, ‘Yes, go,'” D’Arpino continued. “I went into this mode … I feel like I was there physically, but something took over me and I didn’t even think — I just did it.”

When D’Arpino ran into the tiny break room in the back of the store, the first thing she saw were Kayla Scholz’s feet. She then noticed Scholz was blue from her nose to her neck, and within seconds, D’Arpino dropped to her knees and began administering CPR, to the relief of coworker Sarah Sweeney.