‘The Office’ Taught CPR So Well, It Helped a Guy Save a Woman’s Life

Thank God for The Office. Not just for a delightfully entertaining show (which is one of my favorites), but for imparting such essential wisdom on its viewers. Such as how to perform CPR.

For all the Office fans out there, you probably remember the two-part episode, “Stress Release” where after someone has a stress-induced heart attack, manager Michael Scott decides to have an office-wide CPR seminar.

And it was this critical scene that bestowed the knowledge of resuscitation on a young Tucson man named Cross Scott. Yes, that is his real name and no, no relation to other well known Scott.

After discovering a woman slumped over in her car with her lips turning blue, Cross Scott leaped into action and broke the window of the woman’s car. Checking for a pulse and finding none, Scott knew he had to perform CPR to revive her. He said later in an interview:

“I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life. I had no idea what I was doing.”

But what guided Scott in resuscitating the woman was the image of Michael Scott performing comical chest compressions on an armless dummy while singing “Stayin’ Alive” from the Bee Gees. Remembering this particular scene, Scott was able to assume the position and started singing aloud that proud refrain, “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

And it worked! Minutes after performing CPR for the first time in his life with no prior training except an episode about a bungling office manager, Scott was able to get the woman breathing again. The woman was rushed to the hospital, but seems to be doing okay now and has since been released.

Yes, so a huge thank you, Greg Daniels, for creating The Office and this episode, and thank you to Steve Carell for demonstrating CPR so effectively. Cross Scott is now looking into getting officially CPR certified.