A ninth-grade student at Carson High School is being called a hero after she performed life-saving measures on her father using CPR skills she learned in her health class.

A lot students with an interest in medical careers take these classes in case of future emergencies. But for freshman student, Iris Ibarra Montes, that moment came a lot sooner than she expected.

And she says the classes are nothing compared to the real deal, "It was like really funny to me doing CPR on the dummies, but after doing it on my dad it felt very different. It was really intense, way too scary for me."

Montes was helping her father watch some kids when she heard him collapse in her grandma's bedroom and quickly recognized the signs of him having cardiac arrest.

"His tongue went back but he bit his tongue, so it didn't go all the way back and then saliva was going up all his mouth and stuff," she says.

She called 911 and immediately started performing chest compressions while she waited for paramedics to arrive.

Performing CPR is no easy task. Carson High health teachers say it's very harsh on your shoulders, arms, and wrists and their students get exhausted after doing it for just a couple of minutes in class with a partner.

Kelly Gustafson, health sciences and medical assistant teacher says, "When you are doing CPR with a second person you rotate about every two minutes between giving breaths and doing compressions."

Montes had to perform CPR on her father for 10 minutes alone.

Health science teacher and emergency medical technician, Frank Sakelarios, says, "The exercise that happens with doing CPR like that is very strenuous on a person. It's not easy to do it for that long. And so, to do CPR for 10 minutes it is absolutely amazing."

He says most of the time when you hear someone needs CPR, it's not a pleasant outcome.

"I've had to do CPR on a couple people, and I've never had a positive outcome," Sakelarios says.

He tells us he was relieved to hear Montes's father survived and she didn't have to go through what he's experienced in the past.

And it's moments like this where his job feels extremely rewarding.

"We don't get to see the outcomes of what we teach until well later on into life when our students go on to be nurses or paramedics. So, to see this at such a young age it makes me very proud of her."

Montes says, "If it wasn't for him teaching us CPR, like imagine if it was later on, who knows what differently could have happened."

Montes says she initially wanted to be an accountant but after saving her father and watching paramedics and nurses care for him afterwards, she now plans to continue her medical education and go into nursing.