Boy Revived With Help : Phone Is Conduit for Breath of Life

Emergency instructions by telephone from a sheriff’s deputy Tuesday helped a distraught Canyon Country woman revive her 22-month-old son, who stopped breathing during a seizure.

The child started breathing shortly after his mother, who had placed a 911 emergency call, started receiving calm, assured advice on mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from deputy Steven Standley. Renee Smith, 21, treated her son, Jason, while surrounded by frantic neighbors in the trailer park where she lives with her son and her sister.

Paramedics, who arrived just after Jason was revived, transported the boy to Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia, where he was treated and released in good condition. Smith later took him to a private doctor, who said the seizure may have been caused by a high fever and tonsillitis.

“I’m still not sure what really happened,” Smith said Tuesday evening, as she held Jason on her lap. “All I know is that he’s all right now, even though I’m going to have to watch him closely.”

Smith said Jason woke with a 103-degree fever Tuesday and that she called 911 about 11 a.m. after the child started convulsing. She was patched through to the Santa Clarita Valley substation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where Standley, 33, a 10-year veteran of the force, answered the phone.

“We immediately connected her to the paramedics. They dispatched a car, and I stayed on the line, asking her if her son was epileptic,” he said. “She told me he just had a high fever. I remained on the line and told her that she should put a damp cloth on his head.”

Smith said that, while she was talking to Standley, her son turned “completely white. I just ran over to him and started doing everything, pushing his heart, turning him on his side and breathing into his mouth. But he wasn’t responding.”

By this time, the neighbors also were yelling advice, she said.

Standley said he could hear Smith drop the phone. He dispatched a police car to the home, then called back, this time reaching Smith’s sister, Debbie Grass, 24.

“She told me that he still wasn’t breathing and that the mother was trying to revive him,” he said. “I started going over CPR techniques with her, telling her to make sure that the mother’s hand was under the child’s neck, that she had his neck propped up, and that she was pinching his nose so that no air escaped.”

“It was a little crazy,” Grass recalled. “He was telling me all this stuff, and I just wanted him to be here to do it.”

A recording of the conversation, made by the Sheriff’s Department, shows an obviously distraught Grass telling the officer that the child was still not breathing, just lying still. Standley continued to issue instructions, emphasizing that Jason’s nose should be pinched as Smith breathed into his mouth.

Grass yelled off the phone to someone in the room, “He said to pinch his nose.”

Before Standley could give more instructions, the sound of the baby crying could be heard over the phone.

“I knew then that everything was all right,” he said. “The paramedics and police arrived just after that.”

“I felt great about the way it turned out,” the deputy said.

Tuesday evening, the boy seemed subdued, staying close to his mother.