An elderly woman from the Hamilton area is lucky to be alive after she choked on a piece of meat while camping at Two Medicine in Glacier National Park.

Thanks go to Dale Marceau, who was picnicking with his family just a few camp sites away the evening of Aug. 6.

“Two young kids came running past yelling where is the ranger station,” Marceau said. “They said a person was choking.”

Marceau hurried down to the camp site and saw a 79-year-old woman laying on the ground and not moving. The rest of her group stood around stunned and unsure what to do. Marceau immediately grabbed the woman and performed the Heimlich maneuver.

“A piece of meat popped out and someone pulled it out of her mouth,” Marceau said. “But I checked her — she had no pulse and was blue in the face.”

Marceau began to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

“It seemed forever to the other people but not to me,” he said. “After four minutes, she started gasping for air and moving.”

Marceau said he laid the woman on her side to improve her breathing.

“She was still out of it,” he said. “I went back to our picnic, and about 25 minutes later a Park ranger came by. He said if I hadn’t done what I did, she wouldn’t be alive now.”

A Blackfeet Indian raised in Browning, Marceau works as a sous chef at the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier. He’s worked summers with Glacier Park Inc. since 1995, but he works with the Headstart program in Browning during the winter.

“That’s where I learned CPR,” he said. “We teach it at the Headstart program.”

Marceau said he later went to the hospital in Browning to see how the woman was doing. The family was there and thanked him for what he did.

“She’s OK,” he said. “And I’ve been feeling really good all week.”