TOPSHAM — Mt. Ararat Middle School seventh-grader Owen Brigham was eating dinner in his kitchen in Bowdoin last month, looking down at his phone. Then something pulled his attention away.

Brigham’s father had bronchitis at the time and had been coughing a lot. One of these coughing fits caused him to inhale a piece of chicken from the burrito he had been eating.

Corey Brigham was in the living room when he started choking. He walked into the kitchen and was slamming himself into the counter trying to force the food from his windpipe. His son was sitting with headphones on and didn’t hear the commotion. Corey was getting ready to throw a pot at Owen in order to get his attention, but Owen looked up first, and found his father standing behind him, blue in the face. He couldn’t draw a breath. Owen Brigham, 13, reacted quickly.

“I got right up, and just did the Heimlich,” Brigham said.

“He impressed the heck out of me,” said Corey Brigham. “There was no hesitation when he saw I was in distress. He just jumped up and grabbed me.”

The Heimlich maneuver, or abdominal thrusts, is a first-aid procedure meant to dislodge an obstruction from a person’s windpipe by applying sudden strong pressure to the abdomen between the bellybutton and ribcage.

Brigham said it took six or seven abdominal thrusts to dislodge the food.

“Really nothing was going through my head,” he said. “It was a life or death situation. If I didn’t do that, he may not live, so it was just kind of do or die for me I guess.”

His parents didn’t know their son knew the Heimlich maneuver. It’s part of a first aid unit that Mt. Ararat Middle School teacher Lisa Rioux gives sixth-graders. In a dozen years teaching the life-saving technique, Rioux said she’s never known of an instance in which one of her students had to use what they learned to save a life — until last month.

“Knowing that one student got something out of it, remembered it and saved someone’s life, is good enough for me,” she said.

She hopes students don’t ever have to use the Heimlich, but if they do, “Hopefully they’ll follow Owen’s lead — just do it.”

Students practice the maneuver on manikins, working through emergency scenarios alongside classmates.

After the chicken flew out of his windpipe, Corey Bringham caught his breath.

“I said, ‘Thanks, buddy.’ I asked, ‘Are you alright?'” he said, worried his son might be traumatized.  “He went back to eating his dinner.”

After saving a life, Owen Brigham said his mind was racing, but he wasn’t sure what to do next — whether he should talk to someone.

“I grabbed my phone, went to my bed and turned on my TV, sat down and watched ‘The Office.’ I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

The next day, he shared the story with students in his advisory class.

Word spread around school quickly.

“It was a special story for our school, first and foremost for the safety of Owen’s father, just to know that that story came out with a happy ending was really wonderful for us to hear,” said Principal Josh Ottow. “But also as a school that puts the focus on knowledge and skills. … We actually want our students to show that they have learned the knowledge and skills. And whether that’s how to write a good paragraph or whether that’s how to do the Heimlich maneuver, we believe it’s important for students to have actually learned the important skills. In this case, it really mattered that Owen had learned it.”

It’s not uncommon for middle school students to question why they are learning something, Ottow said. This is an example for students to see they are learning these skills because they’re important for later in life.

According to the National Safety Council’s Injury Facts 2017, choking is the fourth leading cause of unintentional injury death. Of the 5,051 people who died from choking in 2015, 2,848 were older than 74. Food is often responsible for choking incidents in the elderly. Choking is one of the leading causes of unintentional death for infants, who require a different rescue procedure than adults.

Brigham was overwhelmed by the attention once news of his heroics spread. He was honored by the School Administrative District 75 school board last month while the room was packed with teachers and drew a standing ovation.

That triggered an emotional response from his mother, Emily Brigham. She wasn’t home for the close call. Her husband called later to tell her.

“I said, ‘This is a huge deal. You basically saved his life,'” she said. “I said, ‘That wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there.'”

Owen Brigham said he wants to be a police officer, putting his newfound life-saving experience to work professionally.

“I like to help people,” he said.

dmoore@timesrecord.com