Visiting pastor from Georgia saves choking Alabama woman mid-sermon

POLK COUNTY, Ga. - A Polk County pastor says his time as a police officer prepared him to save a churchgoer's life with the Heimlich maneuver. 

A grandmother was choking on a piece of candy in the middle of Pastor Brandon Stewart's sermon. That's when he dropped everything to come to her rescue.

Pastor Stewart normally preaches at his Taylorsville church, just northwest of Atlanta. But this Sunday, he visited the nearby Mt. Zion in Cottonwood, Alabama.

"The pastor that was originally preaching had an emergency that day," he said. "They said, 'Hey you're preaching tonight," and I said, 'That's no problem.'"

Some might say Pastor Stewart's steps were ordered.

He ended up opening a church in Georgia after making the decision to leave Texas during the pandemic.

"The Lord said, 'Hey, everyone else is shut down. I want you to open up.'" Stewart said.

And before becoming a preacher, Stewart was a police officer.

"Part of the training is first responder training," he said. "Including the Heimlich maneuver."

So, when Lois Adams began to choke on her peppermint on Sunday, Stewart knew exactly what to do.

"Usually someone will grab their throat, but I could see the discoloration and I thought, 'Okay she can't breathe,'" he said.

"Next thing I knew, my feet went out of the air, and I was like 'I'm going home,'" Lois Adams said.

FOX 5 reporter Alex Whittler gave Adams a call on Wednesday. The cancer survivor from Alabama couldn't believe she was part of a miracle that day.

"We just went back to worshiping, right back where we left off at," she said.

People get saved in church every Sunday, but even this pastor humbly admits this maneuver was pretty impressive.

"I believe the word when it says, 'The steps of the righteous are ordered by the lord,' because He had me in the right place at the right time," Stewart said.