A Navy SEAL veteran training to become a lawyer saved his professor's life with battlefield-honed CPR after the 73-year-old collapsed from a heart attack mid-lecture — the kind of story that should lead every newscast but barely registers with an establishment press that would rather talk about anything else.
On Oct. 6, Michael Maslanka, an associate professor at UNT Dallas College of Law, was delivering a lecture when he told his students he might not be able to continue — then blacked out. "I just saw blackness," Maslanka told the university Tuesday. He had gone into ventricular tachycardia, a condition where the heart's upper and lower chambers fall out of sync.
Third-year student Matthew Melton didn't hesitate. The 45-year-old Navy SEAL veteran, deployed to Bahrain in 2001 and Iraq in 2005, had trained with 18 Delta medics and field surgeons who saved lives under fire. His instincts kicked in immediately.
"Students were freaking out. Action needed to be taken," Melton told the law school. He performed three rounds of CPR. "He came back. Then he went out [of consciousness] again. I was going from chest compressions to forced air [in his mouth]. When I did the first compression, I could hear his ribs break."
While Melton worked the professor's body like a casualty on the battlefield, another student, Sanchez — who lost her father to a heart attack two years ago — turned to prayer. "Everyone was bawling," she said of the ordeal.
There it is: the two things this country used to count on in a crisis — a veteran's steady hands and a believer's prayers — showing up exactly when needed, exactly where the culture tells you they don't belong anymore.
Maslanka spent 11 days recovering in the hospital. He has since returned to teaching ethics and employment law. He credits his students with his survival, comparing his near-death experience to a crossroads: "I had one that night. Life or death."
"I would not be here today if my students did not act quickly, thoughtfully and responsibly. I would be dead. They saved my life," Maslanka told WFAA.
Twelve years ago, Maslanka appeared in a Texas Bar program where he encouraged students to "think like a SEAL." He's now writing an article entitled "Four Life Hacks That Dying (Twice) Taught Me" for Texas Lawyer.
The New York Post covered the story straight. The Guardian, meanwhile, spent the same news cycle amplifying calls for an ICE-detained nurse — a different campus story with a different political valence. Both are newsworthy. The telling detail is which one the establishment press chooses to elevate and which it lets die quietly.
A veteran broke a man's ribs to keep him alive. A student prayed. A professor walked out of the hospital and back into the classroom. That's the America that works. The question is why the institutions shaping the narrative can't bring themselves to say so.
