A Dallas law professor collapsed mid-class, and a student who had been a Navy SEAL kept him alive with CPR
Michael Maslanka, 73, fell to the floor with no pulse while teaching at the UNT Dallas College of Law. His students called 911, prayed and gave him CPR until paramedics came. He is back in the classroom.
16 November 2026
Photo: University of North Texas at Dallas
Michael Maslanka, a 73-year-old professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law, says his students saved his life when he collapsed in the middle of an evening class on 8 October. One of them, a former Navy SEAL, gave him CPR until paramedics arrived, FOX 4 and CBS News Texas reported this week.
The class
“I turned to the class and said everything feels kind of blurry, so I don’t think I can have class tonight,” Maslanka told FOX 4. “And then from what the class tells me, I collapsed and hit the floor.”
Matthew Melton, 45, a third-year law student who works in cybersecurity, learned CPR in high school and served as a Navy SEAL. He waited until his professor stopped breathing and had no pulse before he started. “Once he stopped breathing, he lost color, we put him on the floor and started CPR, three rounds,” Melton told the university. He told CBS News Texas he felt the professor’s ribs break: “I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew it was about keeping him alive.”
Daniella Sanchez called 911, then held her teacher’s hand and prayed. Anwar Hannon and Jeff Baza helped Melton, other students went out to meet the ambulance and guide the crew into the building, and the rest of the class gathered in another room to pray.
Photo: FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth
The hospital
Dallas Fire-Rescue took Maslanka to hospital, where doctors shocked his heart twice. The university said he had gone into cardiac arrest. Several outlets called it a heart attack; Maslanka told NBC 5 it was ventricular tachycardia, a dangerously fast heart rhythm. He spent two days in intensive care and several more in a regular room.
“The students saved my life,” he told CBS News Texas. “If the students had not been able to perform CPR when they did, I would have not been able to go to the emergency room and be shocked.”
A week later, Sanchez and other students visited him in hospital. “You were gone,” she told him. “We were grieving your passing.”
Photo: University of North Texas at Dallas
Think like a SEAL
After the collapse, the law school found a video Maslanka made for Texas Bar TV in 2014 about what makes a good lawyer. “The Navy SEALs. They train constantly. They’re always working at getting better,” he said in it. “So, let’s do ourselves a favor. Think like a SEAL.”
He is back teaching and wants everyone who hears the story to learn CPR. “There was a tomorrow for me because of my students,” he told CBS News Texas.
Carry a story in five words
We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. Today’s is below. Do play.
How to play
One real news sentence. The job is to keep the five words that carry the story and let the rest go, then guess. Blue means the right word in the right place, orange the right word in the wrong place.
Yesterday: After fifty years of early alarms and up to a thousand bins a shift in South Oxfordshire, the man billed as Britain’s oldest binman won’t retire. The five were Britain’s oldest binman won’t retire.