A Shropshire woman today told of the debt of gratitude she owes five fellow students who helped save her life after she suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed during an evening class.

Kelly Jarrett, of Telford, said she would have died had it not been for the prompt actions of fellow cake-decorators Lisa Collins, Colette Wassell, Clare Mills and Natalie Walker – who administered chest massage to get her heart going – and Rebecca Broadhead, who relayed instructions over the phone from an ambulance operator.

Another student at the class at the Park Lane Centre in Woodside, Telford, Emma Murray, used 37-year-old Miss Jarrett’s phone to call her close relatives to alert them to the situation.

Miss Jarrett, of Stocking Park Road, Lightmoor, said: “Were it not for the swift actions of those girls in my class I would not be here today.

“Words will never express how grateful I am to them.”

Miss Jarrett, who has a weak heart, which developed after treatment for cancer, put her health problems on the back burner while attending the classes run by Brenda Poiser – until the evening of November 19 when she turned up feeling extremely unwell.

She said it was fortunate there were six women at the class who had done first aid courses.

“They literally saved my life,” she said.

Miss Jarrett was taken to hospital and after spells at the Princess Royal in Telford and the Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham, was discharged last Friday. She is now at home recovering.

She has had an “implantable cardioverter defibrillator” fitted to her heart which acts as a pacemaker and a defibrillator.