Yesterday Cassandra Byrd-Scolaro, a 34-year-old fourth-grade teacher at PS 17, stopped by the S&B Restaurant in Williamsburg to pick up a chicken Caesar wrap for lunch. While she was waiting she heard a commotion as people tried to figure out why a woman had been in the bathroom, with the water running, for so long. Eventually a waitress got the bathroom door open and found a 25-year-old woman sprawled on the floor. Byrd-Scolaro jumped to action.
"She looked dead," she recalls. "She had no pulse. I immediately began giving her compressions." Those compressions saved the woman's life and when EMS arrived three minutes later the woman was once again breathing. "We heard a gurgling," the teacher recalled. "She was coming back."
Not that the woman seemed happy about it. Upon waking she promptly gave her savior the finger. "I didn't take offense to what she did and if I had to do it again, I would have done what I did again," the teacher says now. Police suspect the woman had overdosed on drugs—a needle and spoon were later found in the bathroom.