Austin Fox had a pretty good day for himself Thursday.

It wasn’t even 11 a.m. and he’d already saved two lives. Not bad for an eighth-grader at Albemarle School.

The lives he saved weren’t real, they were resuscitation dummies used at College of The Albemarle to train health students. However Fox showed he had the technique to do CPR on both a child and a woman and get their heart beating again.

“It was really neat,” Fox said.

Fox was one of dozens of area eighth graders who made the rounds of businesses on what has become known as Groundhog Shadow Day. The Elizabeth City Chamber of Commerce and area schools coordinate the event to expose kids to business.

Ganelle Sutton, a teacher at Elizabeth City Middle School, said the event is important because it drives home why what students learn in the classroom will have a real-life impact on what they do in later life.

“It opens up their mind to why they need to learn science and math and reading,” she said while the group toured Hall Honda.

Dave Rodgers, the general manager of the car dealership agreed to serve as host again this year after doing it in 2011.

“It gives students a taste for what business is like,” he said. “A lot of kids really don’t know what the business world is. The book can only tell you so much. When I was growing up, we didn’t get this kind of opportunity.”

Even if they never decide a career in car sales and maintenance is for them, all the students are pretty likely to own a car one day. For Rodgers it was also an opportunity to dismiss the stereotypes.

“You hear them all but a lot of people think of car dealers as somebody with slicked back hair wearing plaid that just wants to get their money. It’s not like that, and it hasn’t been like that. In this business you live or you die by your reputation.”

Both the public middle schools in Pasquotank County participated as well as Camden Middle School and Albemarle School. Some visited Montero’s, COA, the car dealership, DRS, the U.S. Coast Guard base, the Army recruiting station, TCOM, Albemarle Health, and Pasquotank County EMS.

The visit to Albemarle Hospital seemed to impress many from Albemarle School. In addition to providing they knew CPA, they got to use arthroscopic surgery equipment to look around a lifelike training dummy. Elaine Prichard got to hold the wand.

At Hampton Inn, Toni McGovern got to field questions about the hotel industry. She’s been working in the industry since she was a 16-year-old in Stanton, Va., and today she’s the manager of the 101-bed Elizabeth City location.

Her college degree is in biology, but she said she fell in love with the hotel business because she likes to talk and deal with people.

“A lot of people don’t think the hotel industry is a fun career, but it really is.”