A Portsmouth woman will be around for her two sons and two grandchildren after the quick actions of a Suffolk Parks and Recreation employee.

Tameka Williams, the business manager for Parks and Recreation, was standing in line at the Chartway Credit Union inside the Farm Fresh on Victory Boulevard on Aug. 20 when she heard a teller saying, “Ma’am, are you all right?”

Williams looked around and saw a woman slumping to the floor and shaking. Williams caught her and lowered her to the floor.

“She’s having a seizure,” Williams, who is certified in CPR and first aid thanks to her work in the Parks and Rec department, told the woman’s friend. “She just needs to come out of it.”

Other bystanders had already called 911, and Williams had turned the woman over so that she wouldn’t choke.

“Then she stopped breathing,” Williams said this week while recounting the incident. Even after two months, her emotion is visible as she talks about what happened.

Others helped Williams turn the woman back over. Someone else got ready to attempt CPR, but it was clear he didn’t know how. Williams stepped in.

“I did what I was taught and what I’ve taught others,” said Williams, who is certified to instruct CPR classes for city personnel and the general public. “I had to do rescue breaths, and I had to do compressions. Then she took that gulp of breath. I was so relieved.”

By that time, the ambulance had arrived. But as soon as Williams moved out of the way, the woman went into cardiac arrest again. The emergency medical technicians had to shock her heart twice before they loaded her onto a stretcher.

Williams wrote her personal number on her business card and slipped it into the hand of the woman’s friend, asking for an update call.

“For two or three weeks, I did not hear anything,” Williams said.

Myriad thoughts ran through her head. “I hope everything I tried was good enough. I hope she lived. I hope she’s doing OK.”

Then one day, she was at home washing the dog when she got the phone call from 57-year-old Delphine Robertson.

“I was so relieved,” Williams said. “It was like I had a breath of fresh air. I had been hoping for this phone call and hoping I would receive it one day.”

Williams and Robertson met in person last week, along with their families, to have dinner together. It turned out the two already had a connection — Williams’ husband and Robertson know each other through work.

“We love her to death,” said Robertson, who has two sons and two grandchildren to live for.

She said the doctors told her she had a cardiac arrest. She only remembers needing to go to the bank and then waking up in the hospital — three days later.

“It was really, really emotional,” Williams said of their meeting. “I’ve got a friend for life.”

Williams said she appreciates Parks and Rec Director Lakita Watson for getting department employees certified. She’s been certified for many years, but this was the first time she had to use her skills.

“I was wondering, if that day came, if I would be able to do it,” Williams said.

She encourages everyone to get certified to perform CPR. The next class at the East Suffolk Recreation Center, 138 S. Sixth St., is on Nov. 18. Call 514-4500 to sign up.

“I just felt that was something I was assigned to do,” Williams said. “Seeing all that happen really made me appreciate I was certified.”