<p>PARIS — The French government gave a medal Monday to a math teacher-volunteer fighter who used CPR to save the life of a jogger in a Paris park, a gesture that has drawn national attention to the importance of first aid training.</p>
<p>The jogger’s wife, Paris-based Associated Press journalist Lori Hinnant, helped identify the anonymous rescuer by putting up thank-you signs in Monceau Park, where her husband Peter Sigal went into cardiac arrest on April 28.</p>
<p>Multiple passersby intervened when he collapsed. Marion Dehecq, a 24-year-old math teacher who works as a volunteer firefighter a few days a month, performed CPR until paramedics arrived. Others helped by counting the compressions and applying a public defibrillator installed in the park.</p>
<p>“You saved my husband’s life,” Hinnant wrote on the signs to the mysterious helper. “Thank you, from our whole family.”</p>
<p>Once Dehecq was identified, French Prime Minister Jean Castex tweeted his thanks to “our everyday hero,” and wished the now-recovering Sigal and his family well.</p>
<p>On Monday, France’s minister for citizenship issues, Marlene Schiappa, gave Dehecq a bronze medal for courage and dedication in a ceremony at the Paris fire service headquarters.</p>
