Joe is a student at Western Harnett High School, but she cheers competitively for a team in Sanford. She was at a competition on Sunday, March 5 in Raleigh at Broughton High School. Her mother says she was warming up, when all of the sudden she became unresponsive.

“They had just gotten finished with the very first stunt. At that point of the stunt, they come down to where the girls are holding her in a seated position. When she got to that position, she was unresponsive,” said Andrea Joe, her mother.

At first, they thought she was having a seizure – but a coach realized she didn’t have a pulse. They started CPR, and her mother jumped in to help save her daughter’s life.

“I had done two sets of compressions and breaths,” she said. “I had looked over and toward my left side and I finally saw that the AED machine had arrived.”

She put the paddles on her daughter. The machine told her an electric shock was needed. She administered the shock and continued CPR until medics arrived.

Joe was taken to Wake Med, then transferred to Duke Medical Center for a Cardiac MRI. It confirmed the teenager had suffered a heart attack.

Her mother is just thankful she’s alive.