Giffords' Intern Recounts Efforts to Keep Her Alive in Moments After the Shooting

In the moments after she was shot in the head while meeting constituents outside a supermarket on Saturday, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was still "alert and conscious" and grabbed a young intern's hand when he asked her if she could hear him.

Giffords now is in University Medical Center in Tucson and underwent two hours of surgery. Doctors there said Sunday she can hear and follow "simple commands" but is unable to speak, in part because she is on a ventilator.

Daniel Hernandez, 20, a junior at the University of Arizona, had been working for Giffords for less than a week when he accompanied her to the event. When the shooting occurred, he was about 30 feet from the congresswoman when he heard the gunshots and immediately headed for her.

"I was helping Congresswoman Giffords at Congress on 'Your Corner,' which was an event to try and meet with her constituents," Hernandez said in an interview on ABC's This Week. "And before the shooting happened, we had a lot of excited constituents who were very happy to get the opportunity to speak to their congresswoman, because everybody was going to get a chance to speak with her one on one for about three to five minutes."

"Once I saw that she was down and there were more than one victim, I went ahead and started doing the limited triage that I could with what I had ... checking for pulses and then ... covering and applying pressure to the wounds," he said.

State Rep. Matt Heinz, who is also a physician at University Medical Center where Giffords was taken, told the Arizona Republic that Hernandez's quick reaction probably saved the congresswoman's life.

"I had to lift up the congresswoman, because she was severely injured, and I wanted to make sure that she was able to breathe OK because there was so much blood," Hernandez told ABC. "We had to grab whatever we could. And because we were outside of a grocery store, the employees from the grocery store brought out smocks that are used by the meat department that were clean, so that we may use them as bandages, because that was really the only clean cloth that we had."

Hernandez said that, in those moments, "The congresswoman was alert and conscious. She was able to hold my hand when I asked her if she could hear me. I wasn't able to get any words from her." Hernandez said to her, "If you can hear me, Gabby, just grab my hand to let me know that you're OK."

She took his hand, Hernandez said, which was her way of "acknowledging that that she could hear me."

Later, at the hospital, Hernandez overheard people saying Giffords had died, and also heard that news on NPR.

He told the Arizona Republic that when he learned she was still alive, " I was ecstatic. She was one of the people I've looked up to. Knowing she was alive and still fighting was good news. She's definitely a fighter, whether for her own life, or standing up for people in southern Arizona."