A Texas law professor suffered a heart attack during class and was brought back by his students, including a Navy SEAL veteran who drew on his battlefield medical training to help save his life.
Michael Maslanka, a 73-year-old associate professor, was lecturing at the UNT Dallas College of Law on Oct. 6 when he warned students that he might not be able to continue. Moments later, he lost consciousness.
“I just saw blackness,” the longtime litigator told the university Tuesday.
His students immediately rushed to help after he collapsed.
Among them was Matthew Melton, a third-year law student and Navy SEAL veteran who had taught CPR while serving with the US Special Forces.
Melton was deployed to Bahrain in 2001 and Iraq in 2005. He also trained alongside 18 Delta medics and field surgeons who treated wounded troops and saved lives on the battlefield.
The 45-year-old said those experiences taught him to “always be able and ready to pivot and always be open to what might happen.”
“Students were freaking out. Action needed to be taken,” he told the law school.
Melton, who is preparing for a legal career, performed three rounds of CPR on Maslanka, but the professor remained in critical danger.
“He came back. Then he went out [of consciousness] again. I was going from chest compressions to forced air [in his mouth]. When I did the first compression, I could hear his ribs break.”
Maslanka cried out after regaining consciousness, but he did not understand where he was, Melton said.
“He thought his life was about to be extinguished. He didn’t know where he was,” the veteran recalled.
As Melton, a cybersecurity professional, worked to stabilize the law professor, Sanchez — who lost her father to a heart attack two years ago — turned to prayer.
“Everyone was bawling,” she said of the terrifying ordeal.
Maslanka suffered ventricular tachycardia, a dangerous heart rhythm in which the lower chambers of the heart beat rapidly and ineffectively, preventing the heart from properly pumping blood.
He eventually regained consciousness and spent 11 days recovering in the hospital. The professor credited his students with saving his life and described the experience as a crossroads.
“I had one that night. Life or death,” he said before praising the students who came to his aid.
“They knew what to do. They organized themselves intuitively. And that saved my life. Let me just be clear,” he told WFAA.
“I would not be here today if my students did not act quickly, thoughtfully and responsibly. I would be dead. They saved my life.”
It has since emerged that, 12 years ago, Maslanka appeared in a Texas Bar program titled “Mike Maslanka @ your desk,” in which he encouraged students to “think like a SEAL.”
He also wrote an article titled “Four Life Hacks That Dying (Twice) Taught Me,” which is scheduled to be published in Texas Lawyer.
Maslanka, who joined the university in 2015, has since returned to the law college, where he teaches ethics and employment law.