"My mother couldn't dial 911 on the phone, she was just too nervous, so [Romeo] showed her how to do it on the keypad," said his mom, Sherece Holland.
A Chicago 7-year-old's quick thinking has been credited with saving his mother's life after she suffered a stroke.
Sherece Holland, 55, said she was getting her son ready one December morning when she noticed something was off.
“I was stumbling,” Holland told InsideEdition.com. “I didn’t have any pain, but I knew something was wrong... I didn’t know it was a stroke."
Confused, her son Romeo, 7, went to get his grandmother, and asked if he could borrow her cane since "mom’s legs are not working," Holland recalled.
His grandmother then went to check up on Holland in a frenzied panic, but Romeo knew just what to do.
"He said, 'Calm down, granny, calm down,'" Holland said. “My mother couldn’t dial 911 on the phone, she was just too nervous, so he showed her how to do it on the keypad [on the burglar alarm panel]."
Holland, as police officer with the Chicago Police Department, said she had taught her son nearly two years ago how to dial 911 on the keypad. They live with Holland’s elderly mother, and Holland said it was important he knew how to call for authorities in case something happened while she wasn’t home.
"But it was for my mom — I didn’t ever think he would be calling for me," she said.
Despite having learned the signs for a stroke, Holland said she never imagined that could have been what was happening to her.
The ambulance came and took Holland away shortly after, but she said she didn’t recall the ride, and woke up confused after surgery the following day.
“I woke up with everybody around me, I didn’t know what was going on,” Holland said. “They were so excited I was even able to speak at that point."
According to Dr. Schott Geraghty, of the Neurosciences Institute at Christ Medical Center, Holland could have died if Romeo didn’t call the ambulance when he did.
“When she arrived, she was completely unable to say a word, and her right side was completely paralyzed," Geraghty said in a press statement. “Romeo perceived something was wrong and acted to save his mom’s life."
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He explained Holland was lucky she did not have any brain damage, even though a blood clot in her artery was stopping blood from flowing to her brain.
“I feel good, just a little slurred speech and sometimes I mix up the words,” Holland said. “I bounced back real good — especially at my age.”
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