Rush Delivery of a Precious Package

The screams of the woman in the black Range Rover shattered the morning quiet Tuesday in a Corona del Mar neighborhood.

Lee Solow, out for a morning stroll with his dog, Bandit, heard the tortured shrieks and saw a shirtless man running toward the SUV.

A kidnapping or carjacking, Solow surmised, whipping out his cellphone to dial 911.

But as he stepped closer to the SUV, he said, he realized the panicked woman “was in trouble, but a good kind of trouble.”

Robin Sanders, 38, was about to have a baby.

Doctors had planned to induce Sanders into labor Thursday because of her family history of quick deliveries.

“We’re talking 10 minutes after they start having contractions, the baby’s there,” said her husband, Greg.

In fact, Robin Sanders was born in a car.

On Tuesday, she awoke to a strong contraction. Then came another. After the third, around 6:30, the couple phoned the doctor, who told them to go immediately to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

They made it only 100 yards in the Range Rover.

“I can feel the baby!” Robin Sanders shouted. “I can feel the baby!”

Greg Sanders parked the SUV and pulled off his new Banana Republic T-shirt to use as a blanket for the baby. The black shirt was handpicked for the occasion, he joked.

By the time he reached his wife’s side, the baby’s head was crowning. He said he knew there would be no time for paramedics.

He’d have to deliver their fourth child himself.

Although Solow is a doctor, he wasn’t much help: He’s a PhD.

“I’m a psychologist,” he said. “We’re afraid of blood.”

As Robin Sanders began pushing, her husband called 911. Edward Gallegos, a supervisor at MetroNet Fire Dispatch, which serves seven Orange County cities, answered.

Gallegos said he’d delivered five babies in his 14 years as a firefighter but never over the phone. He said he was impressed with how composed the father sounded.

“Yeah, that wasn’t me,” said Greg Sanders, who had handed the phone to Solow early on. “I was busy calming my freaked-out wife.”

Less than three minutes later and 30 seconds before paramedics arrived, Sovarae Sanders was born, at 6 pounds, 5 ounces.

Greg Sanders said he promptly discarded his Banana Republic T-shirt, along with the five towels he used to clean his car.

“We have the baby,” he said. “She’s keepsake enough.”