Anne Anderson-Posnack learned CPR last year to help police and rescue crews when disaster hits the area. But the crisis that spurred her use of that life-saving knowledge struck in her own home recently — and paramedics say it saved her husband’s life.

Officials say it’s likely that Len Posnack would not have survived his heart attack on Sept. 11 if she hadn’t sprung into action.

“I want as many people to get CPR trained as possible,” Anderson-Posnack said.

The Wauconda woman shudders to think what might have happened to her husband of 30 years if she had not been trained.

She now wishes she had learned CPR earlier in life, but is grateful she could put it to use in time to make a difference for her husband, who suffered two cracked ribs. That’s a common problem after undergoing cardio pulmonary resuscitation.

Posnack got up at 3 a.m. to check his blood pressure after feeling pain in his chest. But his blood pressure wasn’t too high, so the couple didn’t worry about it, Anderson-Posnack said.

He complained of feeling under the weather during breakfast, Anderson-Posnack said.

“He said, ‘I just don’t feel right,’” she remembered.

After breakfast, Anderson-Posnack and her husband said goodbye to visiting relatives. She walked away from the doorway, but turned around when she heard a loud thud near the foyer.

She saw Posnack face-down on the floor. He fell like a tree, the wife said.

“I think when I tried to speak to him and he didn’t speak, I knew something was majorly wrong,” Anderson-Posnack said. “He’s fallen in past, but I knew I’ve got to get him to breathe.”

It wasn’t instinct that kicked in, she said. It was the volunteer training she had taken last year to join the Wauconda Community Emergency Response Team.

CERT trains citizens to assist police officers and firefighters during a disaster, or for search and rescue missions.

“It’s a community service that I felt I should do,” Anderson-Posnack said. “They said, one of the first rules of CERT is make sure everything is ok at home. Without it, I know Len wouldn’t be here.”

She dialed 911 and unlocked the front door for paramedics, then turned her husband over, lifted his head, cleared his air passage, and administered CPR.

As she pushed on his chest, she yelled.

“I was coaching, saying, ‘Don’t die! don’t die!’ I’m sure my adrenaline was in gear,” she said. “I knew if he didn’t get oxygen, he’d have brain damage.

“His coloring changed in about a minute of me doing this. The purple color lifted. It was like a curtain lifted. As frightening as the purple was, you could see he was responding.”

She pushed on his chest for five minutes until Wauconda paramedics arrived.

They used a defibrillator, and Posnack’s pulse returned. He screamed from the pain, his wife recalled.

When paramedics took over, Anderson-Posnack let herself cry.

“I broke down after the help came,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Don’t you dare die on me! We haven’t gone to Hawaii yet!’”

They’d always vowed to see Hawaii, and Anderson-Posnack hoped the humor of reminding him would help bring him back.

Now, her husband’s recovery is what matters.

“The heart is fine, the brain is fine,” she said.

The cracked ribs are uncomfortable, but Posnack is in good spirits and grateful, said his wife.

“He said, ‘I always knew she was amazing, now I really owe her,’” she added.

Fellow CERTS are impressed.

“This really hit home with a lot of us,” said Gregg Heinemann, who is a CERT team leader. “We’re always try to train for the ‘what ifs’ … To me, it is just tremendous.”

Hawthorn Woods Police Cmdr. Gary Scharringhausen helped organize the South Lake County CERT team, and said communities throughout the county could use more volunteers like Anderson-Posnack.

“We always say, ‘take care of your family, and after you’re done, take care of your neighbor, and the next neighbor after that.’ To hear someone in our training was able to take care of their family, I think that’s outstanding. I hope that opens up a lot of people’s eyes about what we’re doing here,” Sharringhausen said.

About 60 people are active CERTS in South Lake County, Sharringhausen said. In recent months, they have helped police and firefighters after strong summer storms. They also assisted in the search for a lost child who was found in Kildeer.

Often, they can be seen directing traffic at accident scenes, or helping to pull a car out of a snowy ditch.

“Every time I hear of something our CERT guys do, I’m proud of everybody,” he said. “It shows that what we’re doing actually has meaning at the other end. You could train 100 people, but you never know what they do when they’re out there.

“We are always looking for more volunteers,” he said.

Volunteers take nine weeks of three-hour classes to complete the CERT training. The classes are free. The fall class is already underway. But for more information about CERT, call Gregg Heinemann at 847-910-3619 or go to http://www.slccert.org