Sydney Palmer and her best friend Sydney Slobig hadn’t had their CPR training cards long enough for the ink to fade but suddenly there they were, two teenage girls kneeling on a Baker City sidewalk, saving a man’s life.

Palmer, a 17-year-old junior at Baker High School, had already pushed on Jerry Jewell’s chest more than 100 times Saturday afternoon on the south side of Campbell Street, just across from McDonald’s.

“I could tell she was getting tired,” said Slobig, 16, a sophomore at the Eagle Cap Innovative High School in Baker City. “It’s really hard work, doing CPR.”

Slobig took over the chest compressions.

“Thank God Sydney was there,” Palmer said on Sunday.

Palmer waited for her friend to finish the cycle of 30 compressions, then she lifted Jewell’s head and breathed into his mouth.

The girls, friends since the sixth grade who learned CPR in January because they both babysit frequently, kept working on Jewell.

They didn’t know if he was alive.

They knew only that they couldn’t stop until the Baker City Fire Department ambulance arrived.

They didn’t notice the wailing siren as it neared.

They didn’t notice anything except Jewell.

“He was purple,” Slobig said. “It was like a scary movie — we couldn’t get through on 9-1-1.”

The ambulance arrived.

Palmer and Slobig didn’t quite know what to do. The adrenaline was still coursing through their bodies, temporarily countering their fatigue and blunting the significance of the experience.

“It didn’t even hit me what I had just done until I sat down in my car,” Slobig said. “I cried. I didn’t know if he had survived or not.”

She and Palmer drove to Slobig’s house.

The phone rang. The caller was Officer Coleton Smith of the Baker City Police Department.

Smith told the girls they had done everything right.

He told them they had saved Jewell.

He told them Jewell, a 58-year-old truck driver from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was at St. Alphonsus in Baker City, and although he was preparing to be flown to St. Alphonsus in Boise for heart surgery, he wanted to meet the two girls.

Palmer and Slobig drove to the hospital.

“He told us we had saved his life,” Palmer said. “We all cried.”

“It was really emotional,” Slobig said.

Jewell told the girls they were heroes.

Several other people said so too.

But the two Sydneys disagree.

“I don’t feel like a hero,” Palmer said. “I feel like God put Sydney and I there at the right time.”

Indeed the girls’ recent completion of CPR training is but one of the coincidences in this story.

A series of events coalesced to bring the pair to the sidewalk where Jewell lay dying, and had any of those events not happened the outcome might well have been different.

Firstly, Palmer and Slobig were supposed to be grilling burgers and serving sodas Saturday afternoon to baseball fans at Wade Williams Field.

Fifteen minutes before noon, when their shift was scheduled to start, they got a phone call. The baseball games were canceled due to rain.

Slobig and Palmer drove to McDonald’s to get lunch.

They like to eat in the parking lot near O’Reilly Auto Parts, several blocks to the west on Campbell.

The girls were sitting there when a semi-truck went by on Campbell, heading east toward the freeway. The truck was hauling a trailer loaded with vehicles.

Slobig noticed in particular a white Jeep.

“I was thinking how I’d really like to have that truck,” she said.

A minute or so after the truck rolled past, the girls saw a friend drive by, also heading east on Campbell.

They thought their friend might also be going to McDonald’s for lunch, so they figured they could meet the friend there.

But the friend, it turned out, was not at McDonald’s.

Slobig and Palmer parked in the restaurant’s parking lot and decided to finish their lunch there.

It was about 2 p.m. when they noticed a commotion across Campbell Street.

It looked like a fight. Anyway a group of men were shouting and scuffling. A woman seemed to be trying to break up the altercation.

“I’m not sure why, but we felt like we needed to go over there and see if there was anything we could do,” Palmer said.

Slobig drove straight across the concrete island that divides cars that are turning left, onto Birch Street, from traffic that continues east on Campbell.

“I don’t even know how I made it across the median without yanking out the motor or something,” Slobig said. “I drive a little 1989 Nissan.”

As Slobig parked, both girls saw one of the men climb into a pickup truck and drive away. At almost the same instant another man crumpled to the sidewalk.

That was Jewell.

He apparently suffered the heart attack immediately after the argument, Palmer said.

Police cited Scott Edward Fraser, 33, 1311 Place St. in Baker City, for disorderly conduct, Baker City Police Chief Wyn Lohner said.

Palmer said the altercation started after the pickup driver, apparently angry because Jewell had driven through an intersection as the traffic light turned red, followed Jewell’s truck.

Jewell’s friend, Wayne Simmons, a truck driver who was traveling with Jewell, was trying to help his ailing friend.

Palmer said she told Simmons, “I’m certified in CPR, can I help?”

Simmons said yes.

Palmer started chest compressions.

She tried to explain to Simmons how to breathe into Jewell’s mouth after each cycle of 30 compressions, but he wasn’t familiar with the technique.

After Palmer tired and Slobig took over the compressions, Palmer handled the rescue breathing.

The girls performed CPR on Jewell for about 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived.

Both said they had no conception of time passing while they were working on Jewell.

See more in the May 23, 2016, issue of the Baker City Herald.