"She just like opened her eyes real big and took a really deep breath," Kenzie Heitger said. "I was like oh my gosh thank goodness, thank goodness this worked. I've never done CPR before, it was my first time and it was scary."

"She just like opened her eyes real big and took a really deep breath," Kenzie Heitger said. "I was like oh my gosh thank goodness, thank goodness this worked. I've never done CPR before, it was my first time and it was scary."

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"She just like opened her eyes real big and took a really deep breath," Kenzie Heitger said. "I was like oh my gosh thank goodness, thank goodness this worked. I've never done CPR before, it was my first time and it was scary."

Sixteen-year-old Kenzie Heitger was on her lunch break inside the Connellsville Walmart last month when she noticed a commotion at the front of the store.

Heitger said when she spotted her co-worker, 18-year-old Hai-Lei Rugg, sitting on the bag rotator at register 6, unconscious, she knew what she had to do.

"We laid Hai-Lei on the ground, put a coat underneath her head so her head was comforted," Heitger said. "She had no pulse, no breathing."

Heitger said Rugg was also sweating, so a customer offered the cold vegetables from her cart to cool Rugg and then Heitger began CPR.

Heitger said after 23 compressions, Rugg gasped.

"She just like opened her eyes real big and took a really deep breath," Heitger said. "I was like oh my gosh thank goodness, thank goodness this worked. I've never done CPR before, it was my first time and it was scary."

Rugg remembers taking that breath.

"I came back with a big gasp of air and my eyes were darting all over the place," Rugg said.

Before that moment, she said she only remembers realizing something was wrong.

"I started holding on to the register and I'm like shaking real bad trying not to fall down and one of the other co-workers comes and tells me to sit on the bag rotator," Rugg said. "When I sit on the bag rotator, I am out like a light."

Rugg said she was taken to the hospital by ambulance and released later that night.

Although she said she feels fine, Rugg is not yet cleared to go back to work, but she is grateful that because of Heitger, she likely will be.

"If Kenzie wasn't there I don't know what would have happened," Rugg said. "I might not have woke up."

Walmart honored Heitger, inside the Connellsville store, for saving her co-worker's life.

Both Heitger and Rugg are planning careers in the medical field, and they hope their story will help other teens realize the importance of CPR.

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