Leetsdale Judge Comes to Aid of Girl Having Seizure

Robert Ford was spreading mulch on his front yard on Thursday when a yellow school bus pulled to a stop outside his home.

He wasn’t surprised to see his cousin Barb Auginbach, a bus driver for the Quaker Valley School , beeping the horn shortly before 3 p.m. Plenty of people know Ford, so it’s not unusual for people to wave or say hello when he's outside, he said.

But Ford said he was surprised to hear Auginbach yell, “Hey Bob, get up there on that bus, they need somebody who knows first aid to help a student.”

 “What do you want me to do?” Ford said.

“Don’t you know first aid?” she replied.

Ford looked up the street and saw a bus pulled over on Beaver Road near Village Drive. Traffic was backed up behind the bus.

Ford was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt rather than his signature black robe, and he was covered in black mulch. He rushed to the bus and asked the driver where the stricken student was. The bus driver directed him while trying to reach 911, Ford said.

The 16-year-old girl was slumped over as if she was sleeping, and she didn't appear to be having any type of seizure he'd ever encountered. Ford sat her up and asked the other students on the crowded bus for her name.

“There’s nothing you can do for seizures but move things out of the way and keep them from swallowing their tongue,” Ford said.

As he talked to her, the girl showed little response at first, but five to 10 minutes later, Ford said, she started coming around. Students told Ford the girl often suffers from seizures. He continued talking with her.

“By that time the police were coming and the ambulance. I told her 'We’re going to get you off here and have the EMTs take a look at you. She said ‘OK.’ ”

Ford joked with the girl, telling her he needed her to get better so she could do his mulching.

James Santucci said police arrived at 3 p.m. He commended Ford for a job well done.

“He was on the scene and on the bus before we got there,” Santucci said. “The female was stabilized by Judge Ford.”

An ambulance took the girl to as a precaution, Santucci added.

Ford’s wife Sandy said she thinks the judge's skills as a former police officer kicked in.

"I think he just went into policeman mode," she said.

Ford said he remembers CPR and other life-saving techniques from the training he received as a police officer when he worked in Aleppo Township. Ford now serves as the local magistrate with an office based in Leetsdale.

“She might have come out of it anyhow. It was just one of those things,” he said.