OAKLAND — Students, staff and the Oakland Tech High School community are mourning the death of teacher Jaime Humberto Cruz, who sustained a heart attack while teaching there in late April.

Mr. Cruz died at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland hospital May 1, six days after arriving by ambulance. That he arrived at all was thanks to quick thinking and heroic efforts on the part of his students, including one who performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation until medical staff arrived.

“It was an amazing thing; I’m extremely proud,” said Josue Diaz, the school’s co-principal.

“If they had not stepped in, we would have had a different story entirely,” he said.

Diaz was in his office April 25 when he overheard his assistant taking a call saying someone had collapsed.

He rushed to Cruz’s classroom to find half the students standing there, stunned, while a student from a neighboring class was administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

That student, Andrea Witon-Paulo, 18, is enrolled in the school’s Health Academy. As part of her studies she had just finished an emergency medical technician course at Merritt College, Diaz said. She rushed in when some of Cruz’s students ran out of the classroom, shouting for help. Others called the principal’s office and 911.

“The student is training to be an EMT (emergency medical technician). She knew exactly what to do and was bold enough to do it on the spot,” teacher Maryann Wolfe said.

“The kids did all the right things,” she said.

The nurse and staff from the school’s TechniClinic took over until firefighters and paramedics arrived.

“It was a good effort on everyone’s part to maintain some sense of order in that chaotic moment,” Diaz said.

When Cruz got to Kaiser, he was listed in critical condition. He never regained consciousness and sustained another heart attack there.

Cruz, 42, was in his fifth year teaching government and economics to seniors at Oakland Tech. He was preparing his students for upcoming advanced placement tests when he collapsed, Diaz said.

“He was an outstanding student all his life, a good friend of mine and a gift to Oakland Tech,” said Wolfe, chair of the social studies department for the past 30 years.

“There’s a lot to say about him,” she said. Cruz joined the faculty in 2012 when he opted to discontinue his doctorate studies in comparative literature at UC Berkeley to be able to stay in the Bay Area with his husband, she said.

He was interested in the mechanics of government and gifted at getting his students engaged, Wolfe said.

Cruz was a native of Brownsville, Texas, and earned a scholarship to study in Scotland his senior year. He attended Columbia University in New York, graduating with honors before going to graduate school at UC Berkeley. His dissertation adviser there “found him to be one of her brightest students ever,” Wolfe said.

Last year, as he had every other year since he came to the school, Cruz joined a group of 100 students and several colleagues on a week-long field trip to Washington, D.C., funded in part by the Close Up Foundation. There, the group studied the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and went on to New York, where the itinerary included Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, Broadway and Wall Street.

“He was there for the students, really focused on his class, very collaborative about how to better support the students,” Diaz said.

“He would raise concerns about the students’ level of stress, while also making sure they’re getting challenged. He was always present, would show up at meetings and work after school on independent studies with students who needed to catch up.”

And he was known to bring homemade cookies to share with fellow teachers and the school’s custodial staff, Diaz said.

With the advanced placement tests behind them, Cruz had planned to join colleagues and dozens of students this week on a trip to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, part of the students’ English literature studies.

The school has been providing grief counseling and plans are being made for a memorial service. Cruz and the students who worked to save him will be honored at this year’s graduation June 7.

Contact Mark Hedin at 510-293-2452, 408-759-2132 or mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com