Lubavitch Educational Center teacher Talya Ben David was hailed as a hero after she saved the life of a two-year-old child who was found unconscious in a South Florida swimming pool on Purim. 

On March 3, what began as a fun pool party at a home in Aventura quickly turned into a life-or-death emergency, reported Florida’s Local 10 news.

Tina Biton, mother of toddler Raphael described the scene to Local 10. “He went in the pool. My husband started shrieking. He pulled him out of the water. He was white and blue, and it was a horrible thing to see, and thank G-d this angel here was at my home.”

“I just did whatever I thought I needed to do in that moment,” Ben David told Local 10. “I started the compressions, and he started to come back and bring out all the water, and baruch Hashem, thank G-d he was breathing again.”

Ben David credits her CPR expertise to the routine training she received as a teacher in LEC’s Early Stages division that cares for infants and toddlers. Teachers are required by school and local guidelines to be certified in CPR and LEC provides periodic training led by Hatzalah member Rabbi Shmuly Klein. “I knew exactly where to put my hands and what to do because we practiced on a mannequin,” she said.

“We are incredibly proud of our Morah Talya whose quick thinking and CPR training helped save a precious life—true heroism in action,” says Tziporah Elazar, principal of LEC’s Early Stages division. “This is a powerful reminder that CPR is not just a skill, but a lifesaving necessity that every school should take seriously.”

Raphael Biton has, thank G-d, returned home after three days at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. His family told Local 10 that all of his tests came back perfect. “I’m so grateful that my son came out of it the way he did, and there’s so many other parents that didn’t get as lucky as I did,” Biton said.

“I was just there to drop off mishloach manot on the way to a Purim party in shul,” says Ben David. “There were around fifteen other people around when it happened, but they all froze, no one seemed to know what to do. Hashem put me in the right place at the right time.”

Bar Shlomi Biton, Raphael’s father, recently reunited with and thanked Ben David and the first responders who helped save his son’s life. “We’re truly grateful for G-d, for the second chance he gave us with our kid, and for his messengers he sent to be able to save our son’s life,” he told Local 10.