First Aid Corps

A court officer with medical training spun into action to save a baby girl who stopped breathing after a seizure outside the Bronx County courthouse.

Jose Reyes the Saviour

“I’m not a hero,” Supreme Court Officer and certified EMT Jose Reyes told the Daily News shortly after the rescue yesterday afternoon. “I’m still shaking.”

Little Emely Carrasco’s father disagreed.

“I don’t think words can describe how thankful I am,” said Edwin Carrasco.

“You’re talking about a guy who brought my daughter back to life. I don’t know how to thank him. I didn’t know we still had people like that out here.”

Reyes, 44, was helping a co-worker with a sprained ankle into an ambulance on Walton Ave. when an SUV screeched to a halt.

“Please help me! My baby’s not breathing!” Edwin Carrasco was yelling.

“I opened the door and there was a young lady crying and yelling and holding a baby,” said Reyes, a father of three.

“The baby had had a seizure and stopped breathing, so I grabbed the baby and ran to the ambulance that was already there,” said Reyes.

“It was instinct that just kicked in.”

The “really cute little girl,” who turns 2 on June 24, was limp and blue, said Reyes. He put her in the ambulance and began to perform CPR.

“I was so scared,” he said. “I was really nervous. I just wanted to make the baby start breathing again.

“I went to put my face to her nose to see if she was breathing and she started to move, so I knew she was coming to. She started to throw up, and I felt a lot better.”

A second ambulance whisked Emely to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital’s emergency room, where Reyes visited her after finishing his shift.

A sore throat gave her a high fever that led to the seizure, a doctor told her father.

“When she started breathing again, I came back to life, too,” said Edwin Carrasco, 25. “The doctor said she’ll be better soon.”

Julianna Marquez, 9, knew something was wrong. It was late afternoon on a hot June day, and no one else — not even the adults — seemed to notice the little boy face-down on the bottom of the apartment complex swimming pool.

Julianna Marquez the Saviour with Quamir Cooper the Survivor

Julianna, a third-grader with wavy brown hair, was nearby in the water. She swam beneath the surface and pulled 4-year-old Quamir Cooper to the pool’s edge.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Julianna said Tuesday. “I was just like, ‘OK, I’m just going to grab him.’ ”

Julianna’s heroism was recognized in a poolside ceremony Tuesday after Roanoke County officials said she helped save Quamir from drowning at the pool of the Villages at Garst Creek in Roanoke County.

The police officers, paramedics and good Samaritans who helped gathered for the ceremony, where they recounted the drama that unfolded June 1.

Sheena Rosser, Quamir’s mother, was arriving at the apartment complex pool with Quamir and her daughter, Alaejah. The pool isn’t staffed by a lifeguard, and as she ran back to her car to grab pool towels, Rosser lost sight of the young boy.

Quamir floated briefly before sinking to the bottom of the pool’s 5-foot deep end.

Nearby, Julianna noticed Quamir hadn’t resurfaced.

Without hesitation, Julianna said, she swam to the bottom of the pool. She opened her eyes underwater and could see that Quamir wasn’t moving.

Julianna grabbed hold of Quamir’s tiny frame and lifted him to the surface. By then, adults took note of the struggle and helped lift the boy onto the concrete pool deck. His body was limp and showed no signs of life.

Timothy Tilley, sitting nearby with his children, rushed over.

“There was a panic, and I come over to see what was going on,” said Tilley, 30. “We realized the boy wasn’t breathing, so I felt like, you know, we was wasting time.”

Inside the apartment management office, Roanoke County police Officer Bobby Zizelman, 30, was wrapping up an unrelated call to settle a disturbance that had brought him and other officers to the complex.

“I heard a bunch of screams coming from the pool area,” Zizelman said. He ran outside and saw a group of people standing around Quamir.

As Zizelman radioed for an ambulance, Officer Darin Hogan, 42, ran from his car in the parking lot. He approached the unconscious Quamir and couldn’t find a pulse.

The boy was dying.

Sgt. Jay Matze, a 14-year Roanoke County police veteran, was leaving the complex from the disturbance call and heard Zizelman’s urgent radio call for help. He quickly turned around.

“By the time I got to the pool, I saw Quamir laying here on the deck,” Matze said. Tilley “was already at his head. I just came around and between the two of us, we started doing CPR.”

For three minutes, Tilley and Matze, 47, worked together to save Quamir’s life: Tilley issuing breaths through Quamir’s mouth, and Matze performing compressions on the boy’s torso.

“The thought never crossed my mind that he wasn’t going to come out of it,” Matze said.

Quamir tried to breathe, but started choking. Matze and other officers gripped him in the Heimlich maneuver and cleared his airway.

Life soon returned to the boy’s body and he began coughing up water. By the time a Roanoke County Fire and Rescue Department crew arrived a few minutes later, Quamir was crying and asking for his mother.

Quamir was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he stayed for two days. Tuesday was the first time Quamir and his mother had seen the rescuers since the event.

Following the ceremony, Julianna hugged Quamir and asked if he was OK. The shy boy turned away from her — and the television and newspaper cameras — but offered up a smile across his mother’s arms.

“I owe my life to her,” Rosser said of the 9-year-old rescuer. “I would do anything for her. If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be here.”

Wednesday’s ceremony at the pool was attended by Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder, among other officials.

The officers who responded presented Julianna and Tilley with awards for their actions.

“In a day and age when nobody wants to help each other, this little girl and this guy … just hopped down there and no questions asked started giving CPR,” Zizelman said.

Matze, who said he has young children of his own, hugged Quamir and presented him with an honorary SWAT challenge coin, a police token that signifies participation in the elite group.

“When you grow up, you gotta do something nice for someone, OK?” Matze told him. “And when you grow up and you see me some day, you come find me, and you shake my hand.”

Connie Hall-Burke, a nurse at Mercy Memorial Hospital in Monroe, and her husband, Kevin Burke, a former firefighter in Woodhaven and Brownstown Township, were walking in front of 2-year-old girl Madison’s house at the moment her mother rushed out screaming at them, asking if they knew CPR.

“What she said was so chilling,” Connie said. “She said her baby fell in the pool and she’s not breathing.”

Connie and her husband ran into the house past nine other children. She recalled the “look of horror” on the faces of everyone as she was handed the lifeless child by one of the home’s residents.

“It didn’t feel like she was alive,” Connie said. “There was no pulse and she was a steel blue and getting darker. She was soaking wet.”

Connie started rescue breaths, but it didn’t take long for Kevin to realize they were not working.

He started doing back blows and water started spewing out of the girl’s mouth, but she still was not responding.

As everyone around them was in a panic, Connie said she was hoping she was doing all the right things to save the girl’s life.

Kevin put his hands around Madison’s rib cage and Connie cleaned her nose and mouth to clear her airway. He began doing compressions.

“I could hear everyone in the background just screaming and praying,” Connie said. “I’ll never forget the feeling of her in my arms. Then, her mother leaned over and said, ‘Madison, you come back right now.’”

After about 90 seconds of compressions, Madison let out “a thrust of cries.”

“At that moment, for the first time, I thought we were winning,” Connie said. “I thought we had snatched her (from death). But, she went right back to having no response.”

Connie told Madison’s mother to keep touching her, that the little girl knew she was there.

Connie said that when police officers arrived, they immediately recognized the gravity of the situation.

Connie and Kevin said all they had to work with was the family’s kitchen table, and Madison needed a whole lot more than that. She said emergency personnel “scooped her up and ran.”

Once Madison was taken away, the couple found themselves standing in a stranger’s kitchen having just dealt with the enormity of a life-and-death situation.

“All I knew was that the little girl’s name is Madison,” Connie said. “Kevin and I both cried pretty hard in the front yard. We didn’t have the feeling that she was going to live. We just walked back home and didn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Connie and Kevin had such an emotional investment in the girl that they couldn’t stand not knowing the status of her condition.

The couple called a friend in the nursing field for help and received an email at about midnight that there was no word on Madison’s condition.

However, they were able to get their telephone number passed along to Madison’s parents.

Connie and Kevin eventually got what they were hoping for — a message from Madison’s father.

“He called me and left a beautiful message,” Connie said.

Madison has since been released from a hospital and has made a full recovery.

About a week after her release, Connie and Kevin had a private reunion under much happier circumstances with Madison and her parents.

The reunion was emotional for everyone.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” Connie said. “Now she gets to go to kindergarten and do other things.”

They believe that Madison has “awesome, loving parents” and simply called the circumstances an accident. Nevertheless, they view this “traumatic experience” as a teachable moment for other parents.

Connie said it is important for all parents to know CPR, especially if there is a pool and children are around.

Connie and Kevin have been married for 27 years and have four children. They also have a 2-year-old grandson.

The two credit each other for being the “hero.”

That day — May 22 — will forever be significant in their lives and they couldn’t be happier that their neighborhood walk took a turn that helped save a life.

As the after-lunch lethargy was settling in on March 2 at CGI Group Inc.’s Washington Navy Yard office, workers got a jolt of adrenaline when people starting yelling, “Call 911!” and “Who knows CPR?”

Meghan Pituch, 26, a graphic artist and analyst who’s worked at the Montreal-based IT company for four years, jumped out of her seat and ran toward the commotion. She found her colleague, 62-year-old Bruce Strissel, slumped over in his chair. Some coworkers froze in fear while others ran to dial 911 or fled in search of help.

Pituch got moving, too – toward Strissel. She and Donna Jordan, a colleague who works for BAE Systems, performed CPR on the government worker while another colleague Barbara Gault, who is certified in CPR, supervised them until the paramedics arrived. Because of their quick thinking and swift action, Strissel is alive and well today.

To recognize their efforts, the American Heart Association (AHA); the DC City Council; and DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services honored the three women as Heartsaver Heroes at a ceremony at the City Council steps on June 2. Part of National CPR Week, they each received a framed award certificate and a letter of recognition from DC Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.

“Even though Meghan was not certified in CPR at the time, she, Barbara and Donna demonstrated that being active responders saves lives,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI and a member of AHA’s Mid-Atlantic Affiliate Board of Directors. “This shows you simply cannot be a passive bystander in times of an emergency medical crisis.”

A 56-year-old man is recovering in hospital after two family members helped save his life when he went into cardiac arrest Sunday afternoon.

Eric Lemieux the Survivor

Eric Lemieux was working on a tractor with his son-in-law when he had a heart attack. In a matter of seconds, his step-daughter and son-in-law started performing CPR.

“I noticed his lips were turning blue, and his face was kind of turning blue. So I started doing chest compressions right away. And then I noticed the second I started doing that, I noticed the colour started coming back into his lips,” Stephanie Dionne told CTV Ottawa on Monday.

Dionne learned CPR because of a mandatory program through work. She never thought she’d actually have to use it.

“Without the training, we wouldn’t have known what to do. All we would’ve done is call 911. And even though they were very quick to respond, I don’t know if it would’ve been soon enough,” Dionne said.