Freeway Drama : Born in the Fast Lane

Sometime well into the 21st Century the little girl now known only as “Baby Perez” will have a wonderful story to tell her grandchildren. It will be about the way she was born way back in August, 1985.

She may (as grandparents sometimes do) embellish the story a bit. But, according to various official sources, these are the facts upon which her birthday epic will be based:

It was just after midnight Wednesday when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies David Halm and Frank Plass saw a car slam into another in the 14000 block of Bellflower Boulevard. The first car took off at high speed, and the officers pursued it onto the 605 Freeway.

Near the Artesia Freeway turnoff, Halm said, the car went out of control and overturned. The driver crawled out of the wreckage and escaped into a flood control channel. The deputies radioed for help and among those who responded to the accident were Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Ray Haskell and Firefighters Mike Algram and Mike McLaughlin.

Meantime, in Hawaiian Gardens, Art and Martha Perez, both 22, had hustled into their car for a trip to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The young woman was in labor. But it was later, labor-wise, than they thought.

Mrs. Perez was just giving birth when her husband spotted all the red lights on the freeway ahead and screeched to a halt. “My wife,” he yelled to Haskell, “is having a baby.”

In fact, Haskell recalled, Mrs. Perez already had given birth and all he and and his colleagues had to do was tie the umbilical cord--and calm down the young husband. There really wasn’t much to it, Haskell said, the 5 1/2-pound baby was the fifth or sixth he’d helped deliver. Paramedics arrived a short time later to finish up the emergency post-partum work. Mother and child eventually made it to the medical center, where both were said to be doing well.

At about the same time, the Lakewood Sheriff’s Station got an anonymous tip that the hit-run driver could be found in a phone booth in Cerritos. Halm and his partner responded and arrested Sam Dottore, 25, who was taken to the County-USC Medical Center Jail Ward, where he was treated for multiple cuts and bruises and booked on suspicion of evading arrest.