If you’ve ever attended the Nebraska State Cross Country Championships at the Kearney Country Club, you know about the hill.

The Class D girls had just finished their race when Samantha Pavelka started up that daunting hill. The Class D boys would begin soon, and Brady Public School’s principal was on a beeline for some ribbons she needed to pick up for the junior high track team.

Then, in one motion, a man slouched over and fell from a bench just in front of her. In the blink of an eye, the afternoon had changed.

“This gentleman just rolled right off of the bench,” Pavelka said. “At first we didn’t know if he was choking or if he had gone into cardiac arrest, but he wasn’t breathing.”

The man, whom Pavelka would later learn was a farmer from Creighton, lay unresponsive on the ground. The crowd, which was heavy just minutes before, was suddenly sparse. There was Pavelka and one other person, a woman later identified as a respiratory therapist. 

They reached him at the same time. The two strangers locked into action.

“We were trying to get him to roll over, asking questions, anything we could do,” Pavelka said. “But he was completely unconscious. We didn’t know his name. There was no family around. His coat covered any indication of what school he was with.”

With no signs of breathing and uncertainty about what had caused his collapse, the pair deliberated on their next move. They contemplated the Heimlich maneuver briefly before beginning to administer CPR, Pavelka counting compressions, the therapist monitoring breath.

Bystanders called 911, as the pair hollered for an AED. Police officers arrived at the scene, but they too were without a defibrillator. So they continued. And continued. Finally, an ambulance crested the hill.

“With it came the AED,” Pavelka said. “His shirt was cut off, and the patches were placed on his chest. When the shock was delivered, everything went totally silent. And then all of a sudden he gasped. It felt like the loudest breath I had ever heard.”

The man remained unconscious, but he was alive. First responders lifted him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Before Pavelka could process what had happened, he was gone. The crowd moved on. The next race began.

“I didn’t know who he was,” she said. “I didn’t know the other woman who helped. I just stood there in shock.”

The first call she made was to Brady superintendent Ann Foster, who could tell her principal was in shock. Together, they tried to process the gravity of what had happened. Foster was a little shocked, but not by Pavelka’s response.

“Samantha is incredibly kind, compassionate, and authentic,” Foster said. “Her instinct to help, her willingness to act, that comes from who she is at her core.”

Earlier this year, Brady Public Schools expanded CPR training opportunities to all staff. Coaches have long been required to update their certifications, but Foster pushed to widen access. 

“You just never know when you’ll need that skillset,” she said.

The irony wasn’t lost on Pavelka. Because of her quick action, a Nebraska farmer returned home to his fields and his family.

“You sit through those training sessions thinking it’s the last thing you want to do at the start of a school year,” she said. “But when the moment comes, you realize how critically important that training is.”

That weekend felt longer than usual. Because of medical privacy laws, Pavelka couldn’t check on the man after the incident. The uncertainty weighed on her. She tried messaging people she knew from the area, but nobody had heard anything.

On Monday morning, after a weekend of wondering and worrying, Pavelka’s inbox lit up. It was the principal from Creighton Community Schools. The man had survived. He was up. He was moving. He was doing well. 

Pavelka finally had a name, and peace of mind.  During Thanksgiving week, she met the man for the first time. 

“I was excited,” Pavelka said. “I didn’t know his name for so long. It was good to shake his hand.”

Pavelka didn’t always picture herself in education,despite her father, a school board member, repeatedly telling his three daughters that “the best job you could ever have is to be a teacher. Be a teacher. Be a teacher. Be a teacher.”

The girls, who grew up in Maxwell, would nod along and roll their eyes. And then two of the three ended up teaching. Dad was right.

After earning secondary endorsements in history and business from UNK, Pavelka taught business for six years in Wilcox-Hildreth and North Platte before transitioning into roles with ESU 16 and later curriculum leadership positions. She even stepped briefly out of traditional school settings to work with JAG Nebraska, thinking she may have closed the door on school administration for good.

“I was buried in stress,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back.”

But she never stopped following Brady.

Originally one of her favorite schools to work with during her ESU days, Brady remained on Pavelka’s radar. When she saw a new superintendent come in,someone whose posts and philosophy resonated deeply with her, something started nudging her back toward leadership. She applied, and got the job.

“Mrs. Foster and I align so strongly in our beliefs about education and what kids need,” Pavelka said. “That made coming back feel seamless. I finally felt supported again.”

The feeling was mutual from the start.

“In the first 30 minutes of her interview, I knew,” Foster said. “It wasn’t just her experience. It was her heart. Her authenticity. Her alignment with our core values.”

In Brady, those core values revolve around seeing the whole child, building relationships, and grounding decisions in compassion and clarity. Foster said Pavelka embodies those traits daily, and the events in Kearney only reaffirmed it.

“Samantha’s actions that day show the kind of leader she is,” Foster said. “She’s an incredible human. We are very blessed to have her.”