AUBURN — A local drug agent is credited with coming to the aid of a woman who collapsed this week while serving on the Androscoggin County grand jury.

Witnesses say longtime policeman Tom Slivinski rushed to the rescue when the woman suffered a life-threatening cardiac incident at the county courthouse. The woman is expected to fully recover.

Slivinski, a former emergency medical technician, was reluctant to talk about the matter. He was just doing his job, he said. He visibly winces when others — colleagues, friends and more than a few strangers — bandy about the term “hero.”

“I’m no hero,” Slivinski quickly said. “Anyone with medical training would have done the very same thing.”

Try telling that to the grand jury, which treated Slivinski to rousing applause when he returned to the courtroom later in the day.

Try telling that to his colleagues and others who have known the agent over the course of his 40-year career.

“It didn’t surprise me a bit when I heard about it,” Androscoggin County Sheriff Guy Desjardins said. “Tom has always been that way. He works hard and he’s compassionate. He’ll go out of his way to help just about anybody.”

“Tom is the kind of guy who truly wants to help,” said former Maine Drug Enforcement Agency Supervisor Gerry Baril. “That’s just who he is. He doesn’t like to see people suffer, that’s for sure.”

The drama unfolded Tuesday afternoon when the grand jury was doing its monthly duties. Slivinski had been testifying about a case before them. Shortly after he stepped out into the hall, a prosecutor came running out, frantically asking if there was a trained medic in the room. A woman seated with the jury had suddenly fallen ill, he said, and nobody knew how to help her.

Slivinski rushed into the room where, witnesses said, he found the woman slumped in her chair. She was pale and sweating. Her breathing was labored. Her heart was racing and its beat was irregular. She appeared on the verge of passing out and for Slivinski, her symptoms were familiar — the woman was suffering a diabetic crisis, a situation Slivinski had seen many times in his years working from the back of an ambulance. The woman’s condition, according to Maine Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland, had induced a life-threatening cardiac event.

Slivinski moved the woman to the floor. He elevated her legs and monitored her vital signs. Until an ambulance arrived, the drug agent provided life-sustaining treatment, keeping the woman stable until she could be taken to a Lewiston hospital.

“That’s Tom Slivinski,” Auburn police Deputy Chief Jason Moen. “I’ll tell you, If I were sick or hurt somewhere, I’d want him right there working on me.”

Those familiar with the situation described it as a tense moment, but one in which it was clear from the start that Slivinski was in control. If there is such a thing as a wily veteran, they said, it’s Slivinski, a man who began his police career in the 1970s. Baril, the former MDEA head, said he has seen Slivinski come to the aid of strangers — not to mention animals — time and again over the years.

“Tom just loves to be of service,” Baril said. “He goes out of his way to help people. He’s a man you never have to ask twice.”

Slivinski began working for the Auburn Police Department in the early 1970s. He served with the MDEA, went back to Auburn, moved over to the Sheriff’s Office and then landed back at the drug agency again. From 1989 until 2009, he was an EMT, working out of an ambulance and treating the sick and wounded of Lewiston and Auburn.

“Tom is kind, compassionate and always willing to the extra mile to help people out,” said friend Gail Scipione Shelley of Auburn. “He’s a wonderful human being.”

While Slivinski downplayed the matter, his colleagues did not. Fellow agents put him in for a citation, which was sent to the head of MDEA and to the office of the Maine Department of Public Safety. Other cops who bump into Slivinski want to shake his hand and hear the story from the horse’s mouth.

For a veteran drug agent accustomed to working in the shadows of anonymity, it’s all very strange.

“I guess,” Slivinski said, “I’m not used to this kind of attention.”