Daniel and Jonathan Tyshler were on their way to the airport after a busy visit with their grandparents in Southern California when all of a sudden, their grandfather, Boris Govzman, lost consciousness while driving, causing them to swerve across seven lanes of traffic.

When the car came to a stop on the highway’s shoulder, the boys and their grandmother were unharmed. But Govzman, 69, was still unconscious. Their grandmother began to panic.

“It was especially scary after my grandma felt for my grandpa’s pulse and said there wasn’t any. By then, I was really freaking out,” Jonathan, 11, told the Reporter. Daniel, 13, jumped into action. The Odle Middle School student had learned CPR in school the year prior and recognized some of the signals he had been taught. Jonathan helped him ensure blood flow by moving Govzman’s head back.

“I sort of had an adrenaline rush … It was just scary because I didn’t know if I was doing it right,” Daniel said. “As soon as I realized what was going on, I remembered the pattern of compressions. I just did what I learned.” For 14 minutes, Daniel performed CPR and Jonathan and a bystander kept their grandmother calm while waiting for paramedics.

“There was a moment when my mom was kind of panicky and upset, and [a bystander] actually took my mom and turned her towards the freeway… He turned her around and said, ‘Look, you could have all been dead right now. It’s a miracle that you and the boys are here,’” the boys’ mother, Leanna Tyshler, said.

Nationally approximately 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die, according to the American Heart Association. CPR, especially if performed immediately, can double or triple a cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival.

King County has one of the highest rates of survival for cardiac arrest. The majority of cardiac arrest cases happen outside of hospitals, and bystanders in the county were able to initiate CPR in 69 percent of those cases.

First responders were eventually able to restore a pulse, but doctors had to induce hypothermia and Govzman was in a coma for a week following the medical incident.

“It’s one of those phone calls you don’t want to receive. You could imagine, you have no idea what could happen,” Leanna Tyshler said. “It was pretty icy there, because he didn’t have a pulse for 14 minutes.”

But without Daniel and Jonathan’s quick thinking and medical assistance, doctors said Govzman wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“We were both really relieved when he woke up. We didn’t think about it, like, how we had helped. We were more just so happy that he was awake,” Jonathan said.

The boys, along with their grandfather, will be among a group of people honored on Jan. 2 at the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif. They will join other a handful of other young people who saved a life by performing CPR, as well as the people they saved, on a float by Union Bank and American Heart Association with the theme “Keep the Beat Alive.”

“The [CPR] class wasn’t really that fun and I didn’t think I would really need it, but I’m glad I was able to help my grandpa,” Daniel said.

To learn CPR, visit heart.org/CPR or 1-877-AHA-4CPR.