Surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people, the Kelley family felt alone.

The family was in downtown Seattle’s International District to celebrate the Seattle Seahawks winning the franchise’s first-ever Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2014, when a hand darted out and grabbed then-15-year-old Ryan’s arm. When she turned to look, her mother was collapsing to the ground.

“She grabbed my arm and the fence and just went down,” Ryan, now 17, said of when her mother, then-48-year-old Heather Kelley, had a sudden cardiac arrest and blacked out.

“We started screaming and crying,” said Taylor Kelley, now 15. “We couldn’t reach 911. It felt like it was our one lifeline.”

It may have been — but both the Kelley sisters were trained in CPR. Ryan and Taylor sprang into action.

Ryan began applying chest compressions while Taylor began asking bystanders to call emergency services.

A good Samaritan ran down the block to find an idling fire engine. The crew had been called out for a seizure that ultimately resolved itself safely. Now, trying to get through the throngs of Seahawks fans, the crew was in the perfect place to help.

The crew used a defibrillator to shock Heather three times and kick-start her heart.

“My husband was still in New York after the Super Bowl,” Heather said. “Here are these kids, alone, in a major city. They did things I don’t think I could have done.”

The sisters recently accepted the Red Cross Hero award from the King County Red Cross at the organization’s annual heroes breakfast for their work in CPR education.

The Kelley sisters learned CPR while in middle school, and put their training to quick work to help save their mother’s life.

Now, both sisters are students at Newport High School in Bellevue and have used their harrowing experience to teach fellow students, younger children, coaches and other community members how to save lives with CPR.

“The person responding first to an emergency is generally not a first responder,” Heather said. “So knowing how to do CPR can save someone you love.”

Heather now has an internal defibrillator, and the Kelley sisters work with the Hope Heart Institute to help pass along the knowledge.

For their work with that organization, the Medic One Foundation nominated the girls for the Red Cross Hero award.

“It was a really emotional experience,” Taylor said. “It inspired me so much to see these other people who had saved lives.”

The survival rate for a person who suffers cardiac arrest outside of a hospital can be abysmally low, according to a King County study, sometimes in the single-digit percentages of survival rates. Because of a Puget Sound-area stress on the importance of CPR, King County was at 62 percent.

“One of the primary reasons it is higher here is because of Medic One,” Heather said. “It’s a really great (Emergency Medical Services) program, which has trained so many CPR-certified people.”

For the sisters, while the acknowledgement from the Red Cross was a welcome one, it wasn’t all they wanted to take away from the last two years.

“We’re so grateful to everyone and to the Red Cross for honoring us,” Ryan said. “But our goal is so much more important than an award. If we can get the message across about CPR, that’s a win.”

Taylor agreed.

“We go and tell our story to people,” she said. “Learning CPR is one of the most important things you can learn in your life.”