Safe Sitter® Celebrates 30 Years of Saving Lives

Then

Now

In 1984, Amanda Soliday took Safe Sitter® at Community Hospital in Indianapolis when she was 11-years-old. Just a few months after completing the course, she used the rescue breathing skills she'd been taught to save a toddler who had stopped breathing due to a febrile seizure. The toddler was her mother's best friend's daughter. The toddler's family nominated Soliday for Safe Sitter® of the Year and she became the second sitter awarded this honor.

Amanda Soliday is married and now Amanda Oak. She became a Safe Sitter® Instructor while preparing for a career in pediatric nursing.  "I felt Safe Sitter® was so beneficial to me and I wanted to help pass it along," she said. She is a pediatric nurse at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital in Indianapolis and teaches clinical nursing at Marian College Indianapolis. 

Amanda said she finds the things she learned in Safe Sitter® useful as she raises her three daughters, ages 14, 9 and 7. "I only hire Safe Sitters," she says. "I have first-hand knowledge of how important and beneficial this program really is." 

And the toddler she saved? Now 24, she grew up to work in a child-focused career as well. She's an elementary school teacher. She also recently became a first time mother. She and Amanda became very good friends!

In 1991, Chessa Stubbs, then 13, was watching her toddler sister Alexandra, a job she assumed on a regular basis while their mother operated an at-home tutoring business. Her sister began choking on raw carrot sticks. "She was gagging without any sound coming out. I could tell [the carrot] was really lodged," said Chessa, who performed abdominal thrusts (Heimlich maneuver) two times until she could see the carrot in her sister's mouth. Chessa had just completed the Safe Sitter® course two weeks earlier at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. She was named the 1992 Safe Sitter® of the Year.

Chessa Stubbs Rapp has been married for five years, has two dogs and "tons of nieces and nephews" and still lives outside of Houston in Richmond, Texas. She continues to be a positive role model for children. Her job as a Physical Education teacher and after school sports instructor finds her working in many private schools in the Houston area.

 She says her involvement with children actually began with her Safe Sitter® experience. "After taking Safe Sitter®, I babysat all the time and worked at daycares and other schools while in college," said Chessa, who also worked at the YMCA for several years as a Health and Wellness Coordinator and Fitness Instructor before entering physical education. "I have always stayed CPR and First Aid certified since taking Safe Sitter® and feel that it is very important for anyone who works with children to realize the importance of this." 

What is younger sister Alexandra doing these days? She is now a Christian children's book author. She has written three books…so far!

In 2003, Cody Nance took Safe Sitter® at Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas when he was 12-years-old. "I believed in the program so thoroughly that when Cody, who would never in a million years want to baby-sit, got to the appropriate age, I enrolled him in one of my Safe Sitter® classes," said his mother, Nadine Nance, a Safe Sitter® Instructor. Little did Nadine know that her son would use the very skills she'd taught him to save her life four years later. One evening, as Nadine prepared dinner, she tasted a slice of hot roast beef. She inhaled a deep breath as she put it in her mouth and, almost instantly, it became stuck in her throat. Cody stepped behind her, gave three quick, forceful abdominal thrusts and the meat was dislodged.

Now 20, Cody Nance is a busy college student. A communications major at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Palm Beach, Florida, he's studying to be an entertainment reporter. Nadine said after her son saved her life, "He hugged me and said that he was so glad that I taught Safe Sitter® class and had insisted that he attend." 

Cody's twin sisters, now teenagers, also took Safe Sitter®. Nadine says the rule in the Nance house was that no one stayed home alone, even for five minutes, unless they had taken Safe Sitter®. 

"Cody had a hand in being a rescuer and I think that's had a profound effect on him," Nadine said. "Even when he's out, say at the mall, and he sees someone in trouble, he notices. He became more aware and observant."