Santa Clarita officials are honoring a pair of Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies Tuesday night for their life-saving actions back in February.

A Valencia woman was driving her van west on Summit Place, near Rockwell Canyon Road, where she lost consciousness.

The woman’s van continued to idle forward, making a u-turn at the intersection on its own without anyone steering, before it came to a rest with the van’s tail end sticking out onto Rockwell Canyon Road traffic, near College of the Canyons.

A witness saw the situation and immediately called 911, which prompted a pair of deputies who happened to be nearby to respond right away. The good samaritan stayed until deputies arrived and reacted to the medical emergency.

“He’s really the hero of the day,” said Deputy Kevin Duxbury of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station’s Crime Prevention Unit, “because when he realized she wasn’t OK, he stopped and called 911.”

Deputies are trained and annually retrained on life-saving measures such as CPR, and when Deputies Duxbury and Kendall noticed the woman was unconscious, they checked her vital signs and found she had none.

Duxbury administered CPR, and the victim, whom deputies identified only as “Niki,” began to start breathing again, although she remained unresponsive. However, as first responders arrived on scene, the woman once again stopped breathing, and Duxbury, who was still next to the woman, once again began CPR, until she began breathing again.

Fire officials were in the midst of preparing for transport during a third medical incident for the woman; however, the third time around, emergency medical personnel used a field defibrillator to resuscitate the patient.

The woman then was transported to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, where doctors had her back on her feet after about a week of care.

“Niki and her husband expressed appreciation for all that were involved in saving her life, from the passerby who first called 911, the first deputies on scene administering CPR, the Fire Department, AMR transport and the attentive care at Henry Mayo. If one of those pieces were missing, the outcome for this Valencia mother could have been different. Her husband said that Henry Mayo doctors referred to his wife’s recovery as a ‘miracle,’” according to Sheriff’s Department officials.

“This is why it’s so important if you see something tha=t looks wrong, you check on the person and not just drive by,” said Duxbury. “This was a big team effort, nobody saved her alone.”