By Paige Zulandt

Katelyn Williams didn’t expect her life to change when she went into work at the Sumner County YMCA in Hendersonville back in February 2025, but a call for help for an unresponsive man, did just that. Katelyn not only saved a life with her CPR training, but she gained a very important person in her life.

“I remember hearing the word ‘unresponsive’, so I got up,” Katelyn says. “In my head I didn’t really process what I was about to go into, I just kind of went.”

Upon hearing one man yelling for help, Katelyn sprang into action, telling other staff members to call 911 and grab the emergency kit as she made her way to the men’s locker room. Once inside, she saw Billy Austin lying in the middle of stall, unresponsive. She immediately began CPR. Two other gym members, both nurses at TriStar Medical Center, joined Katelyn to help save Billy. Katelyn says they had a hard time checking his pulse since his throat was so swollen.

“It was a mess,” Katelyn recalls. “How you train is very perfect, but real life isn’t.”

Katelyn gave compressions for 10 minutes until EMS took over. She says, ‘the entire time she couldn’t stop thinking that he was somebody’s person’. Once she left the locker room, she was anxious to know if he would be okay. She got to see for herself in person, once she met him in the hospital four and a half days later.

“She just walked up, and she bent over to hug me and she was crying, it was an emotional time for her, and for me as well,” Billy recalls.

The two connected right away and have talked every day since. Katelyn invited Billy to see her off to prom and to attend her high school graduation. Billy says he even has plans to adopt Katelyn, as she hasn’t had a father figure in her life since her dad died when she was 10 years old.

Katelyn was awarded the American Red Cross Lifesaving Award for Professional Responders for her actions. She credits her trainings through the Red Cross and the YMCA for her being able to react quickly.

“I just feel very thankful that I was able to be trained properly,” Katelyn says. “Carson Perry, my boss, is always making sure we’re trained, like top notch.”

Billy, her family and Carson, all joined her to receive the award at the Nashville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross.

“This honor, she is so deserving of this,” Billy says. “The way she responded in that moment, a lot of people her age would have crumbled under that pressure.”

As for what’s next for Katelyn? She says this experience cemented her plans to pursue health care and become an Emergency Room Nurse.

The American Red Cross encourages everyone to learn First Aid, CPR and how to use an AED, so they’ll have the knowledge and confidence to act in an emergency.

To sign up for a class near you, visit redcross.org/takeaclass.