BRIGHTON, N.Y. -- According to the American Heart Association, a bystander giving CPR to someone suffering cardiac arrest can double or triple their chance for survival. However, only 32 percent of victims get CPR from a bystander.

Four year old Scarlett Manelis was one of the lucky 32 percent.

Each step forward the young Brighton girl takes now in occupational, physical and speech therapy after suffering a severe anoxic brain injury from oxygen loss, is a large leap further than where she was two years ago in August of 2013.

“I didn’t think she was going to come out of the ambulance,” her mother Catherine Manelis said. “I just thought that was it.”

Manelis recalls it as a gorgeous day at the lake, one however that turned tragic.

“Kids running around, friends were over,” Manelis said. "We noticed that Scarlett was no longer with the pack of kids running around the yard… My husband and I ran to the front of the yard where we found Scarlett lying flat on her belly unresponsive.”

For six minutes, as they waited for an ambulance, her husband gave Scarlett CPR.

“It just seemed like it was taking forever, and that time was standing still,” Manelis said.

But when CMS paramedic’s Bryon Campbell and Michael DePasquale arrived, they used their skills to revive her.

“It was pretty apparent to us immediately that clinically she was dead and her heart was no longer beating and she was not breathing,” DePasquale said. “Bryon was able to insert a breathing tube and intubate her, and I defibrillate her and we continued with CPR for another ten minutes, fifteen minutes outside their house until we were able to start her heart again.”

They say if it weren’t for all the CPR and proper treatment Scarlett was given, she may have never made it.

“As far as the timing, once somebody is unresponsive and not breathing, every second counts,” Campbell said. “It’s just that an ambulance can typically take anywhere from three minutes to 15 minutes to get onto a scene so brain death can occur in seven minutes. So literally, if the patient goes down, they have immediate CPR, that oxygen in the blood flow continues to happen to avoid brain death in the end, it’s literally every second counts.”

So as Scarlett’s family continues to work with her to recover from the ordeal caused by Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia, a cardiac arrhythmia condition, her mother just hopes her life story may help save another.

“We take everyday one day at a time,” Manelis said. “Obviously this is not anything I had ever expected to happen or occur in our life. I am grateful every single day that she is here and more than anything for her I want her to walk and I want her to talk again. I’m just happy that she made it.”

The Canandaigua Emergency Squad offers infant and adult CPR and AED training. They will work with individuals, groups and businesses. To find out more visit call 394-5860 or click here.