A Texas law professor once urged students to ‘think like a SEAL,’ then collapsed mid-lecture and a Navy SEAL veteran in his class saved him

Michael Maslanka, a 73-year-old law professor at the UNT Dallas College of Law, is back in the classroom after a cardiac emergency in the middle of a lecture brought him to the brink of death. The associate professor told his class he might not be able to finish before he lost consciousness, and he said in a university news release, “I just saw blackness.”

Among his students was Matthew Melton, a 45-year-old third-year law student and Navy SEAL veteran, who jumped into action while others reacted to the scene. “Students were freaking out. Action needed to be taken,” Melton said. He performed three rounds of CPR while another student named Sanchez prayed, having lost her own father to a heart attack two years earlier.

Maslanka has been vocal about the role his students played in his survival. He told WFAA, “They knew what to do. They organized themselves intuitively. And that saved my life. Let me just be clear. I would not be here today if my students did not act quickly, thoughtfully and responsibly. I would be dead. They saved my life.”

Those students really did keep their cool

Melton said the professor would regain consciousness and then go out again, so he kept going with chest compressions and forced air, even hearing ribs break during the process. Repeated rounds of CPR have pulled others through as well, including a Seattle woman who said firefighters took turns doing CPR on her for an hour. When Maslanka came to, he was disoriented. “He thought his life was about to be extinguished. He didn’t know where he was,” Melton said.

The moment carries some irony because of advice Maslanka gave years ago. Twelve years earlier, he appeared in a Texas Bar TV video where he encouraged students to “think like a SEAL.”

Melton brought that kind of preparation into the classroom. He had previously taught CPR, and his military experience includes working alongside 18 Delta medics and field surgeons in places like Bahrain and Iraq. He said his time in conflict zones taught him to “always be able and ready to pivot and always be open to what might happen.”

The cause of the collapse was identified as ventricular tachycardia, a condition where the chambers of the heart lose their rhythm. Maslanka spent 11 days in the hospital recovering, and he called the night of his collapse a defining moment, saying, “I had one that night. Life or death.”

Maslanka has been with the university since 2015 and has returned to teaching ethics and employment law. He also wrote an article titled “Four Life Hacks That Dying (Twice) Taught Me,” which is set to appear in Texas Lawyer.