DENVER -- An 11-year-old girl saved the day when her 2 1/2-year-old brother swallowed more than a half-dozen pills. She used the skills she learned only hours before and helped her father call poison control.

On Monday morning, Estee Dechtman completed the first half of the Red Cross baby sitter’s training course at Stanley British Primary School. During the course, instructors had the students memorize the local poison control number, in addition to other skills that come in handy when supervising children.

That evening, Estee was at home playing with her two younger brothers and a friend, who had asthma medication in his bag. At some point, 2 1/2-year-old Isaac got into the bag and into the asthma medication.

“My brother’s friend went to take his medications, and when he opened his medications, none were there. So that was when we got a little nervous,” Estee explained. “We scanned everything. Luckily we found one on the ground and asked my brother if he ate it, and he said yeah.”

Having learned that ingesting medications can be harmful, Estee immediately jumped into action. She notified their father, Evan, of the situation and recited the local poison control number from memory.

“I was really surprised she knew the number, and it was great because I was ready to pull up the website and look for it, but I didn’t need to because she already knew it by heart,” Evan said.

They told poison control what the medication was and how much her little brother had ingested and, fortunately for little Isaac, the quantity he had swallowed was not harmful enough to need medical care.

Estee and her father credit her recent Red Cross training with providing her with the knowledge and the confidence to act quickly and correctly in what could have been a life-threatening situation.

“My baby-sitting skills definitely came in handy because I wouldn’t have known poison control’s number and it might have been too late by the time we figured it out,” Estee said.

Isaac is doing fine, and Estee completed the second half of her baby sitter’s training Wednesday.