community - 2026-06-05

Mona Vale's Unlikely Hero: Opera Student Performs CPR on Collapsed Man, Then Makes His Exam

Freddy Shaw, 21, stepped in to help a collapsed man in Mona Vale, then continued on to sit his university concert examination

A 21-year-old opera student has been hailed a hero after stopping to perform CPR on a man who collapsed in front of him on a Mona Vale street this morning — before calmly continuing on to sit his university examination.

A 21-year-old opera student has been hailed a hero after stopping to perform CPR on a man who collapsed in front of him on a Mona Vale street this morning — before calmly continuing on to sit his university examination. Freddy Shaw, a Mona Vale local and aspiring opera singer currently studying at the University of Sydney, was walking past Village Park on Park Street, near the Mona Hotel, at around 11:15am when he witnessed a man suddenly fall to the ground. "He basically just fell straight onto his front and onto his head, and it looked quite concerning from there. His body was shaking quite a lot; obviously, there was something very wrong," Shaw said. Without hesitation, Shaw rushed to the man's side, placing him in a recovery position and calling triple zero. The emergency operator, noting the man's breathing rate of once every 10 to 15 seconds, quickly identified a potential cardiac event and instructed Shaw to begin CPR — a skill he had not practised since his days in scouts and surf life-saving more than a decade ago. Drawing on that early training and guided by the operator's instructions, Shaw performed chest compressions while bystanders sprinted to a nearby B-Line bus...