Need to call 911? Get tips from this 8-year-old

It started with a 911 call.

“Hello, my grandma is passing out,” 8-year-old Austin Holdt said from his home in Pacific.

“What’s the address that she’s at?” the operator asks.

Austin responds, his voice clear and calm. “I do not know our address.”

“OK. Is she awake right now?” the operator asks.

“Uhhh. No. She’s laying on the ground,” he says.

On the recording of the 911 call, Austin is emphatic but still cool. He knows the name of the apartment complex and the unit they’re in.

“Is that F like Frank or S like Sam?” the operator asks.

A pause, and Austin answers. “Sam,” he says.

“OK. I’m going to get some help to you. I want you to stay on the phone, OK? Is Grandma breathing right now?”

“Yes,” says Austin.

“Is she looking at you or moving at all?”

“Um, her eyes are closed and barely moving.”

The operator walks him through a series of steps. He makes sure the door is unlocked. He explains that his 4-year-old brother is there, too. He puts the phone down and puts their two dogs safely away in a bedroom.

Six minutes go by, and then, in the recording of the 911 call, you can hear Austin’s little brother in the background, “The fire department is here!”

Austin’s grandmother, Shauna Holdt, recovered. She says it was a matter of low blood sugar and a high heart rate that day.

Yvonne Rhoades, with Valley Communications Center, is the operator on the other end. What was she thinking while all this was happening? “That I wish all my callers would be like Austin,” Rhoades says.

Austin was so smooth under pressure that King County’s E-911 program is honoring him with a “9-1-1 Hero Award” Thursday at the Woodland Park Zoo.

“He was so prepared and so calm and did such a great job of answering questions and getting me the information that we needed to help grandmother,” Rhoades said. “It was just absolutely amazing.”

The awards event also launches a county program to educate kids on how to call 9-1-1, just like Austin did.

For the Holdts, it’s life back to normal at their home in Pacific in the South Sound.

Austin says he’s surprised he’s being honored. “Because when you don’t really expect something, you don’t think you’re going to get it,” he says. “You just think about the situation.”

He says he may sound calm in the recording of the call, but that’s not how he felt. “I was actually really, really scared.”

The King County campaign has three main tips for kids: know how to call, know what’s an emergency, and know your address.

It turns out, this wasn’t the first time Austin has had to make an emergency call.

“He had to call 9-1-1 in the past when I had a heart attack,” his grandma Shauna Holdt says. That was in 2014.

“He saved my life twice now. He’s amazing. I just wouldn’t be here without him.”