Meet Werribee’s own Triple Zero Hero.
Cooper Decker, 12, was one of 31 young Victorians aged between four and 13 who was named a Triple Zero Hero last week by the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority for calling triple-0 when his mum, Melinda, was sick.
Their family had just sat down to dinner one night in November when Melinda went outside, coughing.
“She came back inside, and I was like, ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ … she couldn’t breathe,” Cooper said.
“So then I grabbed my phone and called, and they walked me through what to do.
“First they told me to relax and they told me to stay with mum at all times. At one point, they said to make sure she doesn’t have anything to eat or drink.”
An ambulance soon arrived and took Melinda to hospital, but Cooper was forced to call triple-0 again two days later when his mum collapsed at home due to vertigo.
Cooper was nominated for the Triple Zero Hero award for his first call.
“We got to meet the man he spoke to in his first phone call,” Melinda said.
Cooper added: “I felt happy to see the guy that actually answered and helped me relax.”
At the awards ceremony, Melinda got to hear Cooper’s call for the first time.
“It was surreal,” she said. “I could actually hear myself in the background, struggling to breathe.”
