UNT Law students rush to save professor; ‘If they were not there, I would be dead'

A routine law school lecture turned into a medical emergency when a professor suddenly collapsed in front of students

A group of UNT law students encountered heart-stopping moments last month when their professor suddenly collapsed in class.

"I was teaching a class in damages called remedies, and I felt strange," recalls UNT Dallas College of Law associate professor Mike Maslanka. "I felt strange. I felt chills. I felt Unsteady."

Maslanka remembers everything became blurry. He began to tell his students he didn't think he could go on with the lecture that evening.

Law student Daniela Sanchez initially took it as a lighthearted moment during a stressful point in the semester.

"He was complaining that he was feeling a little tired and we were joking, 'oh, us two professor,' because midterms were the next week," said Sanchez.

Suddenly, there was a shovel of chairs, and students were standing or approaching their teacher.

"I'm not hearing what's going on in the front of the room, but I can now see that there's a problem," said law student Matthew Melton, who was sitting in the back of the classroom.

Their professor suddenly collapsed.

"I hit the floor," he was told.

No one knew it at the time, but Maslanka's heart was starting to give out.

"It was not a heart attack; it was a V-tach," he told NBC 5 on Thursday. "My chambers of my heart stopped communicating with one another."

According to the Mayo Clinic, ventricular tachycardia is a fast, abnormal heart rhythm that originates in the heart's lower chambers (the ventricles) and beats at 100 or more beats per minute.

Severe cases can lead to cardiac arrest.

Fortunately for Maslanka, help was already there in his classroom.

"They were calm; apparently, they were deliberate, and they thought like lawyers," said Maslanka. "The students intuitively broke into three groups."

The medical group just happened to include an elite member of the U.S. Special Armed Forces who's taught CPR classes for years, Navy SEAL veteran Matthew Melton.

"Once he went out, no more breathing, it was making the assessment that okay, something needs to happen now," said Melton, who helped perform CPR.

Everyone in the class did whatever they felt would help in the moment, they recall.

"And what I know how to do," Sanchez asked herself. "I put my hand over him and I father God, in the name of Jesus, I declare healing and victory over this body."

After losing her father to a heart condition about two years ago, Sanchez was among the group that dialed 911 and prayed.

Maslanka's memories are foggy, but he remembers a paramedic at his side and then waking up in Baylor Medical Center.

"I regained consciousness, and a doctor was standing over me, and she said, My name is Dr. so-and-so. We're going to shock your heart, or you're going to die," said Maslanka.

"Then I heard'clear.' That's what they do when they shock you, apparently. I didn't feel anything, then everything was black again."

Maslanka spent several days in the hospital and is now back in class.

Some students visited him in the hospital and at home.

"It was wonderful to see them because they saved my life," he said. "If they were not there, I would be dead. I can't put that more directly to you. I would not be here. They saved my life."

Maslanka is back teaching ethics, employment law and trial techniques in downtown Dallas; forever indebted to the life-saving lawyers-in-training before him.

"Although I will say I've told the students at the end of the semester, I don't want to say a bunch of t-shirts emblazoned with, 'I saved his life, and all I got was a so-so C, C-plus,'" he said with a smile. "I don't want to see that. But they saved my life, and I'll always be grateful to them."