One bad game, then a life-or-death moment in the street. Now a Wembley stand will carry Pippa Sharman’s name after she saved a fellow soccer fan who went into cardiac arrest outside Luton Town’s ground in 2022.
Sharman, a Reading supporter and police officer from Cholsey, Oxfordshire, was leaving Reading’s away match at Luton Town when she saw David Norman crash his car as he suffered a cardiac arrest.
A stand at Wembley will be temporarily named in her honour during the English Football League play-off finals on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, with about 200,000 fans expected to attend across the three days.
Recalling what happened in 2022, Sharman said: “I had left the [Luton] stadium after the most boring game you can imagine and I was walking back to the car when the car that Dave was in shot across the road and T-boned another car.
“As I got [to the car], it was very clear that Dave was not breathing so, with the help of another person, pulled him from the car and gave him CPR and thankfully he survived.
“I just knew that he needed my help and without it he would have died. It’s that simple,” she said.
Sharman said her training kicked in at the time and that it was “wonderful” to know her intervention had saved Norman’s life.
They have since met, and she said she was glad she had been able to help him.
“He’s got three children, he’s married and he’s now got to see all these milestones in their lives because he’s still here to do so. It’s really wonderful.
“It’s just so important people know CPR if they’re ever in that situation to do the same thing,” she added.
Sharman will be at the Championship play-off final on Saturday between Hull City and Middlesbrough as part of a campaign led by the British Heart Foundation.
The charity said more than 40,000 people suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest across the UK every year, but less than one in 10 survive.
It said its Every Minute Matters campaign, promoted by the EFL, has led to more than 520,000 people starting to learn CPR through its free online tool, RevivR.
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