Virginia Boy Dials 911, Saves Dad`s Life

May 24--He fidgeted in his chair, poking at his little brother while waiting for his name to be called, craning his neck to take in the strapping firefighters around him in the banquet hall.

When the awards ceremony was over, there would be cake to eat, Henrico Fire Chief Anthony E. McDowell promised in his opening remarks at the ceremony.

So the kid listened to the politicians, county officials and firefighter brass explain that awards can sometimes seem superfluous and undeserved to professional firefighters.

But when Dominic Gibson stepped up to the lectern to accept the plaque with his name on it, his admiring family knew he'd simply done something he'd been taught all his life -- all seven years of it.

"I just did what I learned," he said, referring to saving his father's life in March at the family's Highland Springs home.

"It's not changed a thing with us; we've been close all our lives. He's just a wonderful, smart kid," said Dominic's dad, Chris Gibson. "But that night, I would have died if he hadn't come through for me."

Chris Gibson is a severe diabetic whose blood sugar can hit two-digit lows and roar into the thousands. "I can somehow function at levels that would kill most people or would leave them unconscious," he said.

But on that March night, Gibson lay unconscious near death, the most severe attack he'd ever experienced. His wife, Christy, was at her job at Red Lobster; so Dominic went to work calling 911, calmly delivering the news of what had happened, providing in deliberate language the address, and providing as well his mother's whereabouts and telephone number.

Younger brother Kemal ran for the medical device that measures blood sugar levels. Paramedics were there in minutes.

Thursday night, Chris Gibson, 35, looked on from the audience with his family as Dominic shook the hands of the luminaries and gaped at the towering men and tough women in uniform.

The student at Fair Oaks Elementary School is one of the youngest people to receive the Special Commendation. He joined other recipients ranging from firefighter Nicholas W. Krajacich, who helped rescue a man trapped on the second floor of a burning home, to firefighter Lisa Butler, whose fierce allegiance to teaching fire safety to schoolchildren may someday produce future heroes like Dominic.

"I don't want to give up (on) the kids," she said, even after 20 years of service and as her fourth-grade teacher looked on.

"I learned how to do what I did in school," Dominic said later, stuffing cake in his mouth and submitting to the handshakes and pats on the back from the big people.

Outside, Chris Gibson, alone in the parking lot as the family headed to the car, winced in pain at the diabetes that he said will take his life prematurely.

Disabled and on benefits, he said the pain is like ice shattering inside his lower legs and arms, daggers of pain for which he absorbs huge quantities of medication to try to overcome.

"When Christy is home, I'll go off somewhere where the kids don't see," he said. "When I'm home alone with the boys, I just try to bear it."

Dominic's wish du jour?

"Go see a firehouse," he said, wiping cake from his lips.

bmckelway@timesdispatch.com

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