Sharon Smith to the rescue.

It has a nice ring to it.

She’s an emergency dispatcher. You might get her if you call 911 for help.

And she’s been known to rescue shoppers from long checkout lines at the Fountain Wal-Mart, where she moonlights as a cashier.

It’s also where she helped save a choking, drunk man on Super Bowl Sunday.

For this episode, Sharon was chosen as a Hometown Hero by the Pikes Peak Chapter of American Red Cross. Other heroes will be profiled weekly in this space.

Actually, Sharon, 36, has been a hero most of her life.

At 14, she and a friend were riding with her grandparents when their car rolled and smashed a tree. Her grandma was pinned behind the wheel. Her grandpa was knocked out.

“I kicked out the window and pulled my friend out,” Sharon says. “That was pretty euphoric.”

As an adult, she went to work in the semiconductor field. But even she couldn’t save that industry.

Sharon went pro as a hero eight years ago when she hired on as an El Paso County Sheriff’s dispatcher. In that job, Sharon instructs frantic callers on everything from CPR to childbirth. To her, chat about how to stop a bleeding gunshot wound is as natural as ringing up bread and milk.

The two worlds collided at Wal-Mart. A man was face down on the floor, unconscious, face purple and barely breathing.

Sharon quickly morphed from store clerk to superhero. Without a second thought, she stuck her finger in his mouth and grabbed a wad of gum blocking his airway. She kept him stable until paramedics arrived.

Then he was gone. Just like the cases she handles as a dispatcher. “We never really get the outcome of the story,” she says. “We pass the torch and take the next one.”

There are exceptions. Sharon was featured on the TV show “Call 911” last summer for her telephone heroics with a terrified girl whose mom had a stroke.

Listen to the 9-1-1 call on gazettedev.gazette.com/yourspace.

“I’m an 8-year-old kid and I don’t know what happened to my mom,” the call begins. “She started screaming and I ran in and she couldn’t talk.”

Sharon calmly talked the girl through the ordeal.

“It will feel like a long time,” she told the girl, “but it isn’t.”

Just as on Super Bowl Sunday, Sharon was in her hero mode.

She credits her mom.

“My mom, a registered nurse, always said, ‘Handle the situation and panic later.’ ”

If I have to call 911, I sure hope Sharon answers.

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Win tickets to the Heroes Dinner: www.gazettedev.gazette.com/redcross

Sharon Smith, Hometown Hero Photo by

Andrea Brown, Your Space columnist Photo by