They hoped to become heroes for pets, instead they became heroes for a human. National Honor Society (NHS) members, Kristin George and Bailey McCreary had done this many times already: walked up to the next house, knocked on the door, and delivered their spiel to collect money for Pennies For Pets. However this time was different.

The woman who opened the door was red-faced and swaying. Both girls originally thought she had been working out. It proved to be far worse than that.

“It was pretty intense,” George said. “You always hear stories about that happening, and you’re like oh that could never happen to me, but it very well can, and it did. She was incredibly disoriented the whole time, and couldn’t function normally. You could tell she was in pain and that something was wrong. She just wasn’t herself.”

All of a sudden, the woman blurted out that she needed to call 911 and ran for the phone in her living room. McCreary and George overheard the conversation as she told the operator that she’d had an allergic reaction to her antibiotics.

When she returned to the girls, she called them inside the house, asking them to find the box that the antibiotics had been in.

“I was panicked and shocked,” McCreary said. “Kristin was the calm one because her mom is a nurse. She had a better idea of how to handle the situation. I just knew she was in a fatal condition, and we had to help her.”

George ended up locating the box in an American Eagle bag in the garbage can outside and was able to give it to the EMTs when they arrived.

With the exchange of this important information, the two honor students were able help save the woman’s life.

“They were invaluable to those paramedics,” NHS sponsor Dyann Kramer said. “Without them, they wouldn’t even have known what to give her. We were very proud of how they conducted themselves. They handled it much better than many adults would. We just thought it remarkable that two girls so young could show the maturity and keep their heads about them to deal with the situation that they did. I would have been a nervous wreck, if it had been me.”

The pride of their teacher carries over to the girls.

“I felt accomplished,” McCreary said. “I felt that Kristin and I were meant to be there, as if it were fate or something. I was proud.”

“I felt it was an amazing cause so we all worked really hard and passionately towards it,” Bailey McCreary said. “The majority of citizens we met were supportive and highly eager. It made me want to contribute to charities more.”

“We got a very good response,” Kristin George said. “People take the term ‘Pennies for Pets’ very literally. We had people dumping like hundreds of pennies in our bucket.”