Positivity: Paramedic Revives Newborn after Successful Search
Dramatic baby rescue
June 1, 2007They checked hampers, even the microwave and the freezer.
As minutes ticked by like hours, the five firefighters and two paramedics couldn’t find any trace of a baby believed to have been delivered not long ago in the West Side three-flat.
“You play hide-and-seek as a child but you never think it would be like this,” said one of the paramedics, Angelo Tsokolas. “I just kept thinking, where can you hide a baby?”
Finally, 15 minutes into the Wednesday night search, firefighter Christopher Tolbert opened yet another closet, tossed clothes aside and started going through plastic bags. He picked up a knotted black trash bag, ripped it open and caught a glimpse of an umbilical cord.
“I was shocked to see that, and I turned it over to the paramedics.”
Paramedic Gregg Bagdade immediately reached into the bag and saw a baby boy, purple but warm, lying on a towel.
Bagdade laid the baby on the bed and saw he wasn’t breathing. So he scooped the boy up and, while walking downstairs to the ambulance, breathed into the baby’s mouth until the boy opened his dark brown eyes and began to turn pink and cry.
“I was pretty confident once we turned him over that he would make it,” said Bagdade, who has an 11-month-old son.
“The baby opened his eyes, peeked around, and that’s when I noticed that he had a good head of dark hair,” Tsokolas added.
The baby was whisked to a hospital, where officials said he was doing fine Thursday night.
Bagdade said his colleagues “do miraculous things every day. This is just one such thing.”
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