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A Carson City 911 dispatcher's six-minute CPR coaching brought a 3-week-old boy back to life after he stopped breathing at home on Jan. 19, 2010, according to Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong.

Dispatch Supervisor Cindy Merrell took the call as the mother, described by Furlong as hysterical, tried to revive her infant son. Merrell read emergency medical instructions from the center's protocol cards while a dog barked and another child cried in the background.

"Cindy immediately began life saving instructions from the center's emergency medical charts," Furlong said. "Her confident instructions and stern tone were quickly accepted by mom." He called the six minutes before Merrell heard a weak cry over the phone an "emotionally exhausting, life-shattering ordeal."

"I was just glad that the baby was alive and I could help the mom," Merrell said afterward.

Furlong nominated Merrell, a dispatcher for more than two decades at that point, for local recognition as a workplace hero, and the Nevada Appeal profiled her that March.

Merrell retired from the Carson City dispatch center in August 2011, closing out a public safety career that began in 1973 when she served as a Carson City sheriff's deputy. Looking back, she said the January 2010 save was one of the calls that stayed with her, along with a far grimmer one the following week involving an unconscious child who could not be revived.

Colleagues credited Merrell's calm, positive approach for having an outsized impact over her career. "It is difficult to imagine how many lives she has impacted over the years, and all of the lives saved," said coworker Liz Hertz.