Oct 27, 2014 3 min read

CLAYSVILLE – A Claysville teenager’s quick thinking and Eagle Scout training quite possibly saved someone’s life Sunday afternoon.

Jacob Durila, 18, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a man who apparently suffered cardiac arrest outside of Minteer’s Market on Main Street, where Durila works. Emergency responders took over once they arrived shortly after 4 p.m., and the man was revived twice.

The man’s name was not immediately known, but both Durila and store owners said they heard he was released from the hospital.

Durila learned CPR through his Boy Scout training, but has never performed it in an emergency. When someone came into the market and said a man was lying motionless in the parking lot, Durila grabbed his phone and ran outside to help.

He checked the man’s breathing and pulse, which was slow, so he started chest compressions and did two sets before emergency responders arrived.

“I really wasn’t nervous at all,” Durila said. “I was a little scared because obviously it was my first time doing this on a real person, but I just stayed calm to make sure I didn’t harm myself in any way trying to help somebody else.”

Wes Parry, who owns the market with his wife, Deana, lauded Durila’s good deed.

“High schools kids can get a lot of bad press for being lazy,” Parry said. “You don’t often hear of one saving somebody’s life and being Johnny-on-the-spot.”

Durila, son of Paul and Robin Durila, is a senior at McGuffey High School. He has been a member of the Boy Scouts for 11 years and became an Eagle Scout in 2012.

For his project, he founded Bags of Hope, which provides useful items to cancer patients at local hospitals. To date, 500 bags have been distributed.

The cause is personal to Durila because his mother is a cancer survivor.

“I will continue that until the day I die or until they find a cure for cancer,” Durila said of his charity organization.

He also was named “Mr. McGuffey 2014” as a junior – part of a Teen Action comedy competition – and received the “Mr. Nice Guy” distinction for raising the most money for cancer research at about $1,300.

Durila is secretary of his local Future Farmers of America chapter, vice president of his 4-H group, and vice president and a peer mentor for Teen Action.

Any free time he has is spent with friends.

“That’s something that keeps me grounded,” he said.

After graduation, he hopes to study business with a concentration in marketing or management at Robert Morris University.